


The Mountains Said I Would Find You Here

by AndreaLyn



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Dubious Consent, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2018-12-30 21:10:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12117303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: Somewhere in the world, Faraday's got a soulmate who's waiting to bear half the pain of his aches and wounds. When he meets Vasquez, he starts to wonder if maybe those bonds matter so much or whether he can choose to ignore that connection to pick an outlaw on the run after killing a bastard of a ranger.





	1. The Battle

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from [Your Rocky Spine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zF0PYpjdPZ0) by Great Lake Swimmers. 
> 
> This whole thing exists because of Hazel Athena, so this is dedicated to her with the begrudging 'god damn it' of writing a 20k+ piece.

When he’d been young, Faraday learned about soulmate bonds in a one-room school alongside a dozen other children. The older ones rolled their eyes as they listened to a lesson they’d heard before, but a young Faraday of only six absorbed it eagerly, learning about how soulmates are connected, sharing between them as normal people cannot. Dreamily, he’d imagined someone who could share his thoughts and dreams, who had all of his skills and shared the same desires.

What they don’t tell you, as a child, is that it’s not _everything_ that you share. You’re not connected on _every_ level. Faraday’s sixteen when he meets his very first soulbonded couple and starts to understand a little more about this great unknown that people don’t seem to talk very loudly about, probably because few people know the actual truth of the matter. Faraday had met the two at the bar after a day’s work with his mother. They’d seemed interesting enough, but they’d quickly become the most fascinating people in the world when Faraday overheard them talking about their bond.

After that, there’s no stopping Faraday and his questions.

“It’s a load of horse shit,” the woman says. She’s dressed like a man and most of the people in town ignore her and her husband, making snide comments about how they’re not welcome to stay. Faraday hasn’t ever cared about societal mores, so he buys them a bottle and ends up drinking with them. “I can’t read his thoughts, don’t know his dreams. That connection is real, though, but it’s physical.”

“I guess they figured since your souls were already matched, the extra help is needed physically,” her husband says. “Any pain she feels, so do I. We share scars, wounds, pain.” He says it like it’s not such a bad thing, though. Faraday says as much with disbelief, but the man just laughs and claps Faraday on the back. “When I say we share it, I mean it. Pain’s split fifty-fifty, same as the damage. It’s saved my life at least twice,” he vows.

“You get strange pains ever?” the woman asks. “You got a soulbond out there?

Faraday isn’t sure that he does, because apart from the usual growing pains of being a teenager, he hasn’t ever really experienced anything that he can’t account for. Maybe he’s like those nine in ten people who don’t have someone out there like that, who isn’t connected on that level. Still, there’s a stubborn part of him that hopes that maybe he’s just not paying enough attention and one day, he’ll recognize a stray flicker of pain for the bond it is.

The couple stays in town for a little while longer before they’re gone. Faraday drinks with them most nights, trying to prod as much information from them as he can. He might not have a confirmed soulbond, but that doesn’t mean his interest isn’t real.

It’s weeks later that Faraday sees the bounty posters for two very familiar faces, even if he takes him a little while to recognize the woman in them. She’s a whole lot prettier in the poster than she’d been with dirt on her cheeks and in men’s clothing to the point that he could barely recognize her, but Faraday supposes that’d been the point.

He’s arrogant enough to believe that now that he’s met an actual pair, he believes he knows more about soulbonds than everyone else, but at the same time, it’s not like it’ll do him any good knowing this. It’s not like he can push that knowledge into the universe and find someone out there just because he knows some new things.

Then, one night, he feels _it_.

He's eighteen and he feels pain radiating from his jaw, like someone’s just punched him in the face. Sitting awake, he wonders if he ain’t dreaming (or drunk), but soon there’s another blossoming bruise on his wrist in the shape of fingerprints, sending frissons of delight through Faraday when he realizes what this is. Grinning despite the pain, Faraday hauls himself to the outhouse and spits blood from his mouth to the ground, laughing in great heaving bursts of dark amusement even as he has to steady himself on the wall to keep from passing out.

He’s got a soulbond alright.

Whoever it is has managed to get themselves into one hell of a barfight, he thinks proudly, wiping the back of his hand across bloody lips while his brain works hard to wonder where the hell Faraday will meet the man. It’s a man, he’s sure, because no one strikes a woman this much, this often, unless she’s unconventional and he’s in for one hell of a surprise.

The next morning, Faraday drinks his way through the cuts, bruises, and blows that his soulmate has suffered, lying in bed to recuperate and work his mind over what he’s meant to do next.

Most people would probably think of this as a curse, but not Faraday.

Joshua Faraday has always known that he’s different than the folks around him. Now, he’s finally got proof. He’s careful and thorough as he patches himself, curious if healing yourself helps your bonded partner (something he hadn’t thought to ask that pair of outlaws, a few years ago) and he hopes that somehow, his soulmate knows that Faraday is going to find him some day.

He leaves his sleepy little town hometown when he’s nineteen with nothing on him but a flask, a deck of cards, enough money to get him to the next town, and a horse. His mother had tried furiously to stop him, but relented when he’d said four simple words.

“My soulmate’s out there.”

She’d deflated, then, because she’d known that there wasn’t a single thing she could say that would do any good in keeping him around. Instead, she’d pressed a few extra coins into his hand and stared up at him resolutely.

“You bring her around to visit when you find her,” she’d insisted.

Faraday hadn’t said a thing to dissuade her belief. He didn’t tell his mother that he doubted very much that it was a woman at all, didn’t say that he was unlikely to ever see this town again, and definitely didn’t say that it was a long shot that he’d even _find_ his pair. 

Instead, he slides the coins into his saddlebag and rides off with that little town at his back, knowing that he’s moving on to better things. There’s someone out there waiting for him and clearly, he needs help winning barfights. Lucky for whoever his soulmate is, Faraday is more than a little experienced when it comes to that and willing to help.

* * *

Amador City is about to run dry in a few days, which means that Faraday won’t have much use for it soon enough. He’s stumbling out of the saloon after another long night of drinking, squinting against the harsh daylight. It’s not a bad little town to be in, but then, it’s about the same as all the other little towns he’s visited over the last decade of his life, always in search of something he’s yet to find. It’s got a saloon, a whorehouse, and a fair share of weary villagers who look twice as old as they should, weathered down by sun and work.

It's also got the requisite one or two soulbonded couples that every town has, but no individual person that’s turned up with similar injuries as Faraday (which, right now, include the fading bruise on his leg from Jack kicking him, not to mention a handful of small cuts from his last drunken barfight). 

Today isn’t exactly the same as all the others, instantly more exciting than the last few when Faraday hears the crack of a gunshot going off. It’s got his hand on his gun instantly, looking around for the shot without actually flinching, but it’s soon clear they’re not under attack. There’s a group of men outside one of the homes, clustered around a man collapsed on the floorboards.

“You fucking shot me,” one of the men bitches. He’s one of the local shopkeepers, specializing in saddles, if Faraday recalls properly. 

“Sorry, Mr. Keene, we were just cleaning the gun and it just went off!”

“Would someone…fuck,” he spits out, “someone go check on Ellie?” 

Faraday watches with growing interest as he wanders closer. “You got a soulbond?” he hears himself asking.

He's already selfishly thinking of those strange bruises and the wounds that had been appearing on his body in the last year, wondering if he can somehow glean a little more information while he’s got a chance. 

The first time he’d felt his soulmate, it had been pretty easy to understand. Blood in your mouth, bruises blooming along your face, aching hands; that’s a barfight. Lately, though, the bruises and wounds have been strange things, almost vindictive. The fingerprints have been staining his wrist, his hips, the cuts have seemed like deliberate things along his jaw and neck. Faraday doesn’t know what’s going on, but he knows it’s not good.

The stranger part about all those injuries had been how they just went away. In the last three months, he hasn’t seen a bruise or a cut or even a nick blossoming anywhere on his body. There’s a tiny voice in Faraday’s mind telling him that his soulmate’s dead, but he thinks he’d know.

He doesn’t even know how, but he swears he would.

Keene looks up at him in disbelief. “I’m bleeding out of my calf and you want to know about my soulbond?” He’s downright crabby, though Faraday supposes if he’d been the one shot, he wouldn’t be jumping for joy at being asked questions. Still, it’s plain rude to talk to a stranger like that, which is why Faraday makes it clear that the shot in his calf doesn’t have to be the only one as he rests both hands on his guns. Keene pales slightly and calms.

“Ellie’s okay,” another man reports as he runs up. “She was still in bed when the shot went off, she’s staunching the blood now,” he says, holding out a handkerchief to Keene so he can do the same. “Wants you to know that you’re an idiot.”

Keene mutters under his breath as he presses the handkerchief to his wound, sighing with relief. “That woman of mine,” he says with delight.

Faraday hasn’t moved, doesn’t dare leave.

“That help? When you treat a wound, does it make it better for you and her?”

Keene still looks annoyed, but between finding out that his wife is fine and treating his own wound, he seems a lot more willing to talk about it. “Didn’t they give you the talk when you were at your mother’s waist? Of course, it helps.”

Truth be told, that’d been a long time ago, and Faraday hadn’t really paid much mind until he’d grown and met a soulbonded couple with real information. He’s flying off piss poor information and doing the best he can, but the trouble is that he hasn’t got a clue how this really works. “I’ll help him inside,” Faraday says, waving off the others.

Keene gives him a tired look. “You’re going to keep asking questions, aren’t you?”

“I could dump you right back in the dirt, see how that pain feels,” Faraday threatens, which seems to shut Keene up fairly quickly. He directs Faraday in which direction to go as Faraday sifts through all the questions he’s been keeping bound up tight because he hasn’t met another soulbonded pair in years. “How’d you find her?”

“Luck,” Keene answers through clenched teeth. “Lot of luck, truthfully. No one’s ever really said how it happens, but people believe you end up drifting towards each other somehow. Me and Ellie, we met when she moved towns. Said she didn’t know why, but she felt she had to be here in Amador. Then we met,” he says.

“And you knew? The first time you locked eyes?”

“Shit, no,” Keene scoffs. “She sliced up her hand real good gutting something I brought back from a hunt and my hand started bleeding all over my gun. _That’s_ when I knew.”

Faraday isn’t exactly delighted with any of this, seeing as it’s sounding more and more like chance that he’ll ever run into his soulbonded partner.

“Most people don’t have one,” Keene says, as if he’s trying to interpret the look on Faraday’s face. “A lot of people who do have one don’t bother looking because they’ve already found someone they love enough, then they put up with the occasional pains. Tell you what, though,” he says with a derisive snort, “it makes things interesting.”

Faraday watches as he opens the door to his place, a short woman with wild blonde hair sitting with her leg bandaged and elevated on a table. “You son of a bitch,” she hisses at Keene, while Faraday stands at the door, watching far too eagerly and impolitely, but he’s not leaving while he’s learning all the lessons he never got as a boy. “Who’s that?” she spits at Keene, nodding towards Faraday.

“Someone with too many questions,” Keene gripes as he hobbles towards Ellie, bending down to brush sweaty hair from off her forehead, pressing a kiss to the warm skin beneath before shooting a displeased look at Faraday. “I’m assuming you’ve got a soulbond, son?”

“Maybe,” Faraday replies, not meaning to be evasive. “Haven’t felt anything through it for near four months now, I’m starting to think if I had one at all, it’s gone because they’re in the ground.”

They both look at him like he’s crazy and Faraday can’t figure out why.

“What?” he demands, face heated with the angry flush of being humiliated.

“If you can feel their pain, don’t you think you’d have felt it if they died?” Ellie says, sounding like she’s never met anyone stupider than Josh Faraday in her life. 

He opens his mouth, then closes it, because shit. For one, he hadn’t exactly thought of that in general, which means that his soulbonded partner is probably still out there, but now he’s wondering what it _would_ feel like if your partner up and died on you. He’s not sure whether he’s relieved with this news or if it’s spelling out a grim future. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. 

“So maybe it’s not dead. Maybe they’ve been knocked unconscious by a good kick in the head from a horse or…or…”

“Or she’s just real cautious and doesn’t get hurt regularly?” Keene cuts him off with a pointed look. 

There’s no point arguing and letting on that Faraday’s sure it’s not a woman, but there’s something in his gut that says that something’s not right. No man who gets in that many tousles and fights over the last few years would just drop off the face of the earth like that, not unless something had gone wrong.

Keene starts to forget that Faraday is even there as he brushes Ellie’s hair off her forehead, whispering soothing little endearments to her, which is starting to make him feel more than a little uncomfortable lingering, even though he’s got plenty more questions to ask. He tells himself that he’ll have time to ask them later. Clearing his throat, Faraday quickly excuses himself, closing the door behind him as he listens to Keene murmuring soft promises.

“Won’t happen again, sweetheart, I promise,” Keene says.

“It’d better not,” comes Ellie’s harrumphed reply. “Though, I already know I’ll get my revenge when this baby of ours comes. I figure we’ll be more than even, then.”

Faraday heads back towards the saloon to drown any jealousy beneath a barrel of liquor until he can’t feel it, telling himself that he’ll get a chance to go back and learn more later. Maybe he’ll even figure out a way to get Keene and his wife to tell him how he can find _his_ partner.

It turns out that luck isn’t on Faraday’s side in this particular case.

Few days later, Keene and his wife are the last thing on his mind when Sam Chisolm buys his horse right out from under him and makes him a job offer. Common sense would tell him to say no, that he ought to bolt out of there and figure out a different way to get a horse. That amount of money means nothing when it’s an undertaking that large and with that few men.

There’s something niggling at his mind, though, some little whisper of a thought that tells him that he needs to join up with Sam. Faraday dismisses it as an insidious voice telling him to bolt from Amador before it goes dry and more idiots like the Babingtons decide to track down Faraday and pin their ill luck on him.

Deep down, though, he knows better.

He’s being coaxed somewhere for something bigger. What that bigger thing is, though, that’s what he doesn’t rightly know just yet. Faraday leaves all thoughts of soulmates behind and sets out for Volcano Springs on Sam Chisolm’s say-so, dropped head-first into something he suspects won’t end well.

How little did he know.

* * *

There’s something disconcerting happening and it all centers on Vasquez.

True, when he’d first met Vasquez, he’d been far too drunk to do much more than insult the man, but now that he’s had a chance to sober up, he’s fascinated. He suspects that part of it has to do with the outlaw couple he’d met as a young teen, still a little starry-eyed about that life. There’s a boyish part of him that’s still enamored with the idea of sticking it to the law and answering to no one. He’s not really thinking about the part where you have to keep your head down and keep running. That interest keeps him close to Vasquez, the initial insults being watered down and washed away by quiet chats over a campfire. 

That tension shifts after they fight back to back in Rose Creek, after which Faraday finds that he doesn’t want to stop insulting the other man, but now there’s an affectionate edge to it. Once they finish dumping the last of the Blackstone bodies into a pile, Faraday claps Vasquez on the shoulder.

“Let’s go drink,” he says, not paying much mind to the fact that he hasn’t extended the offer to anyone else. 

Vasquez looks at him warily, but while he keeps his distance, he goes along. They’ve got the saloon to themselves, seeing as the townsfolk are currently shitting their pants about how little time they’ve got before Bogue comes calling again, but that works to Faraday’s advantage as he pours them drinks, saluting Vasquez with his glass and taking the time to properly let his gaze rake over him. Vasquez is tall, long, and lean, with danger coiled in every limb and mischief glittering in his eyes. 

That dirty laugh of his is something Faraday’s already decided he wants to coax out more and maybe it’s just the thrill of it, but if his soulmate really is gone the way Faraday suspects (seeing as he hasn’t felt _anything_ in a disconcertingly long time), then maybe he can at least enjoy himself. His partner might not be dead, but could be that they’re asleep somewhere in some bed, never to wake. Is Faraday really supposed to sit around and spend the rest of his life pining away for a stranger?

Whether Vasquez will be receptive to Faraday’s advances is another thing, but with enough liquor, any man is willing.

“So, how’d Sam trick you into this disaster?” Faraday asks as he sets his lips to the rim of his glass. 

Vasquez snorts and gives Faraday a look of disbelief as he pours himself a fresh glass. “Told me that if I helped, he wouldn’t be one of the ones after my bounty when it’s all done.”

“So it wasn’t pity for Ms. Cullen’s broken soulbond?” 

Vasquez’s face darkens the second that Faraday says the word, which kicks up Faraday’s interest. Faraday leans forward, unable to help himself, and knocks his glass against Vasquez’s to encourage him to fill his glass to the rim and match Faraday’s levels of intoxication. “People who believe in those give themselves too much power to decide who they want,” Vasquez says, leaning back to spit on the floor in disgust.

“I take it that you don’t believe in the things,” Faraday notes, deciding not to share the fact that he’s most definitely got someone out there, not yet. Or, well, he had someone. He’s not so sure they’re still around. 

“Most people, they have nothing,” Vasquez says. “So, there are myths, stories,” he complains. “People make themselves think that when they meet someone they think they love, they are bonded, soulmates, meant for each other.” His gaze turns even darker as he stares into his glass. “They cut you up because they want to know if there is a bond and when there isn’t, they decide that if they aren’t your bond, they’re still going to take you, no matter what.”

“This sounds like a whole lot of experience.” 

“I told Sam that the ranger deserved it. I meant it.” 

Faraday doesn’t blame him in the least. If their situations were reversed and some asshole lawman started thinking that he and Faraday were destined to be together, he would’ve met his end in the same way. Looks like Vasquez just got unlucky in shooting someone that the world would actually miss.

“What about you? Why are you here?”

“Chisolm bought my horse from under me, won’t give it back until I do my time,” Faraday complains sharply. 

“You’re not here because of Emma, either? Sympathy for the widow?”

“I don’t know. I mean,” he begins cautiously, now that he knows this topic is riddled with minefields, “I think I’ve got a soulbond, but don’t think it’s working right. I’m starting to think the things can fade away somehow. Besides,” he adds, catching Vasquez’s gaze so that his interest is crystal clear, “I’m beginning to realize that maybe one person in all the world for you is a crock of shit and blinding yourself with that belief means you miss out on meeting all sorts of interesting people.”

Vasquez doesn’t look away so much as he narrows his eyes at Faraday with a hum of consideration, lifting his glass for a long drink without breaking their shared look.

“So, that why you’re wanted?” Faraday drags them back to this line of conversation when the silence between them stretches, though never uncomfortable. There’s a sparking tension between them that he’s sure he’s not making up, but it’s keeping him keen to not let Vasquez out of his sight. “You killed a son of a bitch ranger who liked to put his hands places they didn’t belong?”

It gets his blood up, but then, Faraday’s a man who doesn’t like being told what to do. Putting himself in Vasquez’s shoes means that even though it’s long taken care of, he’s spitting mad at the idea that a lawman thinks he has the right to touch whatever he wants.

“Masterson,” Vasquez spits out the name. “I was working on a farm to help drive cattle, hired for the season. We met in one of the small towns. At first, I think, just another annoying _guero_ , like you,” he accuses, but his eyes are sparkling and the corners of his lips are slightly curved before the memory of the man brings them into a scowl again, “then, he starts coming to me at night.”

For what, Faraday thinks he already knows.

“One day, I’d been stepped on by one of the horses. Bad mistake, not so bad bruise,” he says. “Masterson, he pries off his boot and shows me a bruise on his foot. Not the same,” Vasquez says sharply. “I think he thought I was stupid or something. Tried to convince me that we were bonded. When that didn’t work…”

“I’m guessing knives and fists started getting involved.”

“Never anything too deep. He had to hurt himself too if he wanted to keep up the illusion, _claro_ ,” Vasquez points out. 

“When’d you shoot him?”

“When he used that knife to tear open my clothes so he could fuck me when he decided that it didn’t matter if we weren’t bonded. He wanted me,” is Vasquez’s chilling reply. Faraday gets the sense that anyone who fucks with the man in front of him will come to regret it. Maybe he ought to think twice about tumbling him into bed, but even if things don’t go down that path, it doesn’t hurt to pick up decent drinking partners and Faraday finds himself able to tolerate Vasquez more than he’d expected to.

If you don’t make decent friends, that’s how you get stuck rolling with idiots like the Babingtons, after all.

“I shot him twice in the heart,” Vasquez says, tapping the place with two fingers. “He staggered away to die, or get a weapon and kill me back, and I ran. Next town I go into, there’s a poster with a poor likeness of my face on it. Fucking soulbond wanting idiot,” he spits out.

Faraday gives him a curious look, because through all this, Vasquez never mentioned whether he _had_ an actual soulbond. Absently, he thinks he feels a ghost ache in his foot, like some kind of delayed sympathy (or hell, could be his own pains, seeing as Faraday’s never exactly treated his feet well on the road). 

“Glad he’s dead,” Faraday announces, pouring them fresh glasses. “If you’re unlucky, Sam’ll bring us right up to death’s door and you can join the bastard.”

Vasquez lets out a long laugh. “What choice did I have? I say no, he brings me in. You could’ve turned him down, though.”

“And what? Stay in Amador City? I don’t settle well,” Faraday guarantees, drawing closer to Vasquez with a scrape of the chair against the planks of the floor. He licks his lips before taking a long drink of whiskey, his interest doing nothing of the dwindling kind. They spend the rest of the night drinking and sharing glimmers of each other’s past, stumbling to their respective beds where Faraday passes out drunk.

Most men would have heard a story like Vasquez’s and backed off. In Faraday’s case, it only sparks his interest all the more. 

He keeps finding ways to be around Vasquez in the next few days, prodding and poking at him, enjoying rattling Vasquez’s cage and seeing how annoyed he can get him. Funny thing of it is that the more he does it, the more Vasquez seems to soften around him. There’s definitely a spark of something between them, something that Faraday’s loath to name, but they’re definitely past the growing pains of this little friendship.

Of course, it does help that alcohol smooths over problems like water on a stone. As the nights before Bogue’s return start to crawl closer, Faraday can feel his chance to do something slipping away from him. The voices of their companions down below drift away, Jack’s disapproval about the way Faraday talks about his guns fading into the night as he starts up the stairs. 

Stumbling drunk, Faraday hears the steps of someone behind him. He’s had way too much and he thinks it’s best time to hit a horizontal surface before he passes out. The good mood from earlier is still with him, still thinking of Marias and Ethels, when he feels a hand wrap around his wrist. Swaying a little, he stops at the top of the stairs and glances back to see Vasquez standing three steps below him, looking up at him heatedly. 

“What’re you doing?” Faraday feels hazy, like he’s dreaming this.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

Faraday can feel himself holding his breath. It is obvious, but damn if it isn’t unexpected. He glances down into the saloon like he’s waiting for someone to pipe up about this being a bad idea, but when nothing happens, Faraday wordlessly keeps walking towards his room. He’s not stupid, he doesn’t think that there’s something stronger between them, because he knows what happens when someone tries to force that on Vasquez and Faraday definitely isn’t aiming to get himself two shots in the chest. 

That said, it’s a shame that it isn’t Vasquez. It’d be a damn relief if it were, seeing as Vasquez smokes and drinks enough to keep up with Faraday, never minds his awful jokes, and puts up with all the teasing and prodding. It’s a pretty little idea, but he’s fairly sure Vasquez hasn’t got a bond at all. Even if he does, why the hell would he want to be with someone like that, after what Masterson did to him?

This, though? This kind of fun? Well Faraday’s never said no to that. 

He closes the door behind Vasquez, setting his gun belt and all his weapons pointedly down on the table where Vasquez can see them. He doubts the man is scarred for life by what happened, but Faraday’s got a strangely innate need to make sure the other man doesn’t get spooked. Somehow, in the last few days, he’s come to appreciate Vasquez’s company like no one else’s and he doesn’t want to lose it.

That, and if he can avoid dying a brutal death by a jumpy _vaquero_ , he’s all for it.

Vasquez doesn’t disarm, but his hands are nowhere near that gun belt of his, nowhere near the three guns. 

“I didn’t figure you’d be up for this,” Faraday confesses.

“It’s not like I couldn’t tell that you’re interested. You’re not subtle, _guero_.”

“So, Masterson, it wasn’t about him being a man…”

“It was about him being a _hijo de puta_ ,” Vasquez cuts him off in agreement, closing the distance between them. “Don’t make this bigger than it has to be. You’re drunk, I’m drunk, and we’re probably going to die soon,” he points out, fingers slowly moving over the buttons of his vest to loosen the first two before he moves those distractingly long fingers to the button of Faraday’s trousers, sliding his hand inside his underwear to wrap around Faraday’s dick. “You want this?”

“Has _anyone_ ever told you no when you’ve got those beautiful fingers of yours on them?” Faraday challenges, seeing as he thinks a person would have to be insane not to want all of Vasquez’s heat bearing in on them, as handsome as you could dream of. “Don’t you dare stop,” he growls, swaying backwards as the room starts to spin on account of the drink.

Lucky for him, Vasquez is a little more sure-footed than he is at this particular moment and follows him to the bed, pressed along the length of Faraday’s body as he nearly rips open his trousers to get a better grip, rutting against Faraday’s hip to give himself some relief while they trade messy kisses. Faraday’s drunk enough not to realize that it should be better, too consumed with pleasure from the hard stroke of Vasquez’s thumb over the length of his dick, and far too pleased with this turn of events to care that it’s not perfect.

It's good enough, is all Faraday cares, arching his hips forward into the waiting touch of Vasquez’s strong, calloused hand. 

This is one thing that Faraday’s picked up over the years. It might be real nice knowing someone out there is waiting to share your aches, but if they’re not with you, why deny yourself these pleasures? Maybe he’s not as loyal as he could be, but it’s not like it’s enough to stop himself seeking this out.

Faraday tangles his fingers through Vasquez’s hair so that he can tug meanly, yanking Vasquez towards him so that he can part his lips and kiss him again, drunk from the whiskey and the touches. With so little time before Bogue descends on Rose Creek, he hasn’t got the proper time to do what he wants. If he had the time, he’d find them some slick and figure out what it feels like to fuck Vasquez, but as it stands, this’ll have to do.

“Shit,” he exhales when Vasquez starts rubbing his thumb in circles along the tip of his dick, aggressively trying to reduce Faraday to nothing more than a babbling pile of a man. “Vas…Vasquez…”

“Alejandro,” he cuts him off, sealing the name with a kiss to Faraday’s lips. “My name is Alejandro.”

“Joshua,” is his reply, tic for tac, feeling strangely determined to be fair and give his name back in turn.

It doesn’t stop with his name, either. After he’s spent and by the time he’s managed to get his energy back, Faraday slides into a low straddle and sucks off Vasquez with the sloppy determination of a man eager to prove he will, he can, and he wants, though not with the talent a sober man could boast. The tortured cry of ‘Joshua’ trembling on Vasquez’s lips is enough to make him feel like Vasquez is praying to him, exalting his name, which makes him feel ten feet tall in his boots.

When Vasquez comes, Faraday swallows it all back until his lips are swollen and shiny, proof that the two of them didn’t come upstairs solely to pass out.

Collapsing at Vasquez’s side, he lets out a heady laugh. “Don’t need a soulbond to do that,” he mumbles, absently sliding his fingers over the skin revealed by Vasquez’s loose linen shirt, which is still on. He’s worn with pleasure and Bogue’s army being so close feels like a dream that he can ignore. 

Rustling up the energy, Faraday manages to get his feet on the ground as he reaches down to start buttoning up again when he feels the light tug of fingers against his loosened beltloops, dragging him back into the bed. He goes easily enough, maybe because he’s tired and maybe because he wants to, ending up with his cheek on Vasquez’s stomach, horizontally splayed with his feet still on the floor while Vasquez lies in bed, panting heavily and raising Faraday’s head before letting it fall.

“All right, there, V?” Faraday can’t help but tease. “Did someone give you some trouble breathing?”

“ _Chingado_ ,” he accuses in this dreamy little idiot way that has Faraday re-evaluating how insulting that word can actually be. “Come back here.”

Faraday laughs as he loosens his boots and kicks them off to the corner of the room, deciding that splaying atop Vasquez is exactly what he wants to do. The man beneath him gives a protested _oof_ as Faraday shifts into a splayed position, mostly atop Vasquez, but Faraday just drags the blankets a little higher to cover them. 

In the morning, they repeat what happened the night before, only with Vasquez’s mouth on Faraday’s dick and Faraday’s hand returning the favor. They’re sober, then, but there’s the same incredible spark and pleasure and far more skill than the night before.

The next night, there’s no time. 

Goodnight has left them and in the morning, they’re probably going to die. It’s not exactly a mood for fucking, which is why Faraday is so surprised when there’s a knock at his door after midnight. He drags it open a few inches to see Vasquez standing there silently. He doesn’t look like he’s there to mark up Faraday’s torso with kisses as he has the previous night, but damn if Faraday doesn’t want to let him in. He steps aside and heads back to the bed, watching as Vasquez closes the door behind him and stands there, dropping his hat onto the table.

“I have a soulbond,” Vasquez admits, quietly.

“Yeah?” Faraday can’t say that he’s unsurprised, honestly. For all that Vasquez had complained about Masterson, there’s always this echo of regret and grief in the way he speaks when the subject comes up, like he’s pissed off that the man might have even potentially been his partner. He watches as Vasquez takes off his shoes, not sure where this is going. “I take it you never found her.”

“No,” Vasquez admits, sitting on the bed beside Faraday as he rubs his bent knuckles over his own thighs steadily, like he’s building up the courage to say something. 

Faraday knocks him gently with his shoulder, like that’ll give him some kind of encouragement. “I got one too, remember? Well, maybe. Poor sucker’s probably unconscious and has been for months. It’s not so bad when it’s like that.”

Vasquez lets out an empty-sounding scoff. “What if you want it to be someone very much? In your heart and soul, you know it can’t be.” That sick look on his face must be heartache and Faraday is starting to get a good idea why he looks so damn sad. There’s this tiny little voice in his head that’s shouting at him.

If Vasquez has a soulbond, then maybe, possibly, couldn’t it be him?

Of course, the prospect of taking a knife to himself or Vasquez to find out puts him dangerously close to the same territory as a presumptive asshole ranger and that’s not a path Faraday intends to head down. Beyond that, there’s the fact that tomorrow, they’re probably as good as dead anyway, so what’s the point of prodding?

“You’re killing me,” Faraday accuses, his breath subdued and soft. 

“Sorry,” replies Vasquez, not sounding very upset at all. “Can I stay?”

Faraday answers by grasping a handful of Vasquez’s shirt to tug him back into his arms, stroking his back steadily. “Look, tomorrow, we’re probably gonna end up in graves or hurt our poor partners more than words can say,” he says. “Besides, what happened to not needing a soulbond to have a connection. Plenty people just ignore that,” he points out.

“I know,” Vasquez agrees, sucking in a breath sharply. “Sometimes, I like to think that if I had to be connected to someone, it would be someone who understood me. Someone who could be rough and beautiful and very good in bed. And then I think, isn’t it better that I took the decision into my own hands?” he says, sprawling on half of Faraday’s bed as he steals the pillow from him. “You’re right, though. Tomorrow is Bogue and his army.”

Tomorrow, are any bonds going to matter? 

“Get some rest,” Faraday says. “I’m gonna need you at your best tomorrow to cover my ass.”

Vasquez swats at Faraday’s ass with a palm, giving a considerate hum. “Shame I never got to fuck it,” he maligns.

“If we get through tomorrow, that sounds like a pretty reward to me.”

“Promises,” Vasquez replies, quiet and somewhat sad.

They might be promises, but as Faraday falls asleep, he’ll admit to himself that they’re just pretty enough to make him want to fight a little harder to get through the next day. Even if Vasquez is bonded to someone else, that doesn’t mean he has to give the man up. Sliding down to wrap his arms around him in order to hold on possessively tight, Faraday buries his face in Vasquez’s shoulder and tells himself it doesn’t matter that this isn’t his partner because they make their own choices and those are more important, as far as he’s concerned.

Besides, where the hell is this partner of Vasquez’s? Where’s Faraday’s? 

If, tomorrow, they’re bound to die, this would be the time for them to turn up. It’s with that betrayed thought in his mind that he lets dreamless sleep take him, wondering where on earth his partner is hiding and whether it even matters, now that he’s found Vasquez to keep him warm.

* * *

Faraday had woken that morning tangled up in Vasquez’s limbs and extricated himself slowly, fetching them breakfast. They’d eaten silently, drank cold coffee, and then wordlessly made their way downstairs to get into their positions.

“ _Guero_ ,” Vasquez had called to him. “Stay safe.”

“You too,” Faraday had replied. “Remember that promise of ours.”

“Hard to forget,” Vasquez made his promise with a tip of his hat. 

That’s the last he’d seen of Vasquez before hell had broken loose. 

They’ve been fighting the onslaught of Bogue’s men into town and Faraday’s blood is kicked up with adrenaline and explosions, feeling like he’s actually fighting to survive instead of just fighting to kill as many bastards as he can. For these few moments, it actually feels like they’re winning and they might make it out of today alive. The traps are working, the dynamite has taken out more men than Faraday had expected, and he’s managed to make it back to Vasquez’s side in the fray.

Then, _it happens_.

It turns out that fate’s got a few jokes hidden up her sleeve and Faraday is in the middle of one of them right now. It’s so quick in the moment, but Faraday will relive it a hundred times over later when the blur of it settles and he can pick it all apart. 

Right now, in this instant, he gets shot by McCann. Faraday gets shot and the minute he does, the pain isn’t nearly what it ought to be for a shot like that. That’s not the surprise, though, seeing as Faraday already knows that some poor sucker out there is currently dealing with the other half of this pain. The pity he feels for them is swift and instant, seeing as gut shots are nothing to be pleased about. Fast on the heels of that thought, though, is something that feels a lot bigger when he hears the cry of pain from behind him.

That’s when he turns, seeing Vasquez biting back a strangled choke of pain, palm pressed to his torso, clearly in shock and pain.

He's pressing his hand exactly in the mirror image place of where Faraday’s wound is. 

What it doesn’t stop Vasquez doing, though, is struggling to uneasy feet to charge out into the middle of the battle to chase after McCann. Faraday knows _exactly_ how much pain he’s in, the panic rising in his throat as he thinks about the danger Vasquez is putting himself in – the danger his _soulmate_ is putting himself in. That numb panic freezes him long enough for Vasquez to shoot McCann into a pine box, but he’s able to shake off the panic to struggle to his feet, shuffling out to wrap both arms around Vasquez and dragging him back towards the safety of the church.

The last few steps are rough, with Faraday tripping and sending them both to the ground, rushing to get cover again. Sat opposite one another and slumped against the frame of one of the windows, Faraday stares at Vasquez with new, shocked appreciation.

“You,” is all he breathes out, grimacing when he pokes his fingers through the hole in his vest and watches them come out filthy with blood. He crawls across the dusty ground, ducking under the window to avoid shots, and shoves Vasquez’s shirt up to see a wound in the exact same place, watching Vasquez’s abs contract as he pulls in shallow, short breaths, blood spilling from a familiar-looking bullet wound in his gut with no bullet to speak of.

Vasquez is looking at him with shock, though whether it’s from the epiphany or the pain, Faraday can’t be sure. Everything makes so much sense and at the same time, makes it even more confusing.

At least he understands why he hasn’t suffered a single bruise in the last few months. Vasquez has been in hiding and keeping himself as safe as he could. He thinks about how all those cuts and bruises from beforehand aren’t so vague, now, how they come together with Vasquez’s story to paint one hell of a clear, infuriating picture. Vasquez’s words from the bar drift back to him, again, and Faraday sees them in a new light. 

_They cut you up because they want to know if there is a bond._

Clouded with pain and rage, Faraday discovers that his anger at Vasquez being mistreated can kick up even higher, because now it’s not just someone he thinks he’s got a connection with that got hurt. It’s his _soulmate_.

“I know you killed that bastard stone-dead, Vasquez, but when we get out of here, I’m gonna dig him up and do it again.” He’s spitting out the angry words through gritted teeth as he reaches for the cleanest rag he can find, shoving it against Vasquez’s wound as the brutal sound of gunfire keeps crashing down around them.

“It’s you?” Vasquez says, his first words since they were shot. He sounds amazed and frightened and the words are filled with more than a little disbelief. “ _Guerito_ ,” he complains. “I thought I was finally making decisions for myself. I wanted it to be you so badly, but was just as happy knowing I was going to pick you instead of the universe picking for me.” 

Faraday lets out a barked laugh, seeing as he’d had similar thoughts while he and Vasquez had been dancing around the spark between them. Turns out, the universe had probably been laughing its ass off at the two of them trying to take destiny into their own hands, not even realizing that they were two halves of a whole meeting for the first time. Maybe that’s why it felt so right. Maybe that’s why they both wanted it to be the other that badly.

This little epiphany is ruined by Goodnight Robicheaux charging back into town and screaming about a Gatling gun. 

Before Faraday can say anything else, the damn gun is ripping through structures and flesh, sending Vasquez to the ground and dragging a pained howl out of Faraday when the skin of his upper arm feels torn away. His back hits the wood of the church _hard_ , but he fights every instinct to keep out of the line of fire, crawling forward to haul Vasquez off the ground and back into his lap where he’s got cover against the church wall.

“Couldn’t let me be the only one shot?” Faraday lets out a disbelieving huff, dragging his fingers away from the sticky blood at his arm. It’s not so bad, he realizes. Halving the pain of a graze like that means it’ll sting, but it’s not so bad now that the force of the shot’s gone. “Stubborn, selfish bastard.”

“Takes one to know one,” Vasquez counters, chest heaving as he gets his breath back. Faraday’s reluctant to let Vasquez out of his arms, but seeing as there are still a hell of a lot more of Bogue’s men to deal with, he lets him crawl out to start shooting again while Faraday reloads.

It's in the middle of his reload that he hears the tiny, frightened screams from nearby. 

“Fuck,” Faraday hisses in the middle of cover fire, collapsing on his ass beside Vasquez, grateful for the diminished pain of both his wounds, even if getting shot isn’t exactly a walk in the park no matter how mild the pain. “The kids…” He shares a panicked look with Vasquez and starts to feel his stomach sink like a stone. 

He knows what he needs to do, but now there’s something new to consider. When Faraday thought his soulmate was someone he’d never met before in some distant city, a suicide mission had been a bad idea, but he’d figured the poor asshole he’s tied to would’ve come up to that fight with death and pushed through, seeing as it’s not like he’d ever met Faraday to bother giving in.

Now that he knows it’s Vasquez, that paints the situation in a different light.

“Shit,” Faraday spits out. He needs to help the kids, but if he goes out there without a decent plan, he’s not just bringing himself to death’s door, but delivering Vasquez there too. His mind is racing wildly, Sam and Vasquez shooting while he tries to _think_. They’re running low on ammo, but there’s plenty of dynamite still around. “Sam, the kids…”

Sam Chisolm is a smart man, glancing between Faraday and Vasquez and their matching wounds.

“We’ll give you cover and I’ll send Teddy to get those kids out,” Sam promises, “but promise me you’ll be smart about this.”

Faraday only has eyes for Vasquez, staring at him only to see worry reflected back in that look. He’s got dynamite, he’s got matches, and if he can keep a far enough distance, he can take out the Gatling gun. Faraday needs a better plan than the one he’s got, because the one in his mind will probably kill both him and Vasquez in the process.

Shit, what the hell is he going to do? 

Sam, Goodnight, Billy, and Vasquez will cover him, but they’re running low on ammunition. He crawls over to Vasquez and grabs him by the back of his neck to hold on tightly. Faraday drags his nails through the dirty skin, feeling the faintest edge of ghost pressure on his own neck, and he wonders how the hell he never picked this up.

“I’ll go with him,” Vasquez says, “give us cover, send Red if you can.”

“Vasquez,” Sam pipes up.

“If I die, take the bounty,” Vasquez says, not moving his gaze from Faraday’s eyes. “Better yet, let’s not die,” he tells Faraday. 

This is a bad idea, thinks Faraday, because the both of them are already injured. Still, Vasquez is right. If they can manage to split the fire, they might have a chance of taking out the gunmen. He stumbles to his feet, hauling Vasquez up by his bandanna and quick as you like, manages to steal a kiss from the man both for the bravery of his offer and for the fact that it could be the last kiss he gets. “Okay,” he says, trying to figure out the best way to do this. “Okay, we get to the horses, split up and cover each other. Sam, you do your best and you send Red out after us,” he says, already letting himself believe that this plan has half a chance of working. “Vasquez,” he snaps, pointing at him. “You make sure you don’t go the direct route.”

“What? Why?” Vasquez asks, loading up the paltry few pieces of ammo left in his gun.

Faraday tugs his vest back to show the dynamite stick that he’s been holding onto, just in case. “Because this ought to get their attention.” 

Vasquez stares at the dynamite and then out to the chaos outside. He holds up both his guns with a worried look on his face. “There’s only nine bullets, we’re low on ammo,” he says, which is true of the whole group. Bogue’s resources are faltering, too, they just need to get to that goddamned gun before it takes them out.

Easing to his feet, Faraday winces at the pain in his gut and arm, dragging Vasquez with him at a crouch as he pushes them towards where some of the horses have been shielded from the worst of the gunfire. He gives Vasquez a shove towards them when there’s a break in the fire. 

“We can’t let them reload that gun,” Faraday says, popping up to shoot two of Bogue’s men in the forehead where they’re standing guard by some of the horses, probably on orders to make sure that Bogue’s got a line out of town. Grabbing Vasquez by the vest, he hauls him to his feet and shoves him forward towards one of the horses, staggering to one himself. 

Mounting a horse in this amount of pain is something Faraday never wants to repeat, which is a thought that actually drives hope into him. He’s actually thinking about this thing like he’s got a future.

“ _Andale, guero_ ,” Vasquez says before he kicks the horse forward, riding out while Faraday is still getting atop his and giving him a damn heart attack that he’s riding into trouble without cover. That much is clear when Bogue’s men (the remaining three that Faraday hadn’t shot) climb on top of horses themselves and start chasing after Vasquez.

Lucky for Vasquez, they’re not expecting an attack from above and behind. Faraday hisses when a shot goes barely wide of Vasquez, nearly taking him down. Faraday’s got one of the men in his crosshairs when he goes down before Faraday can even take the shot, a sniper’s kill from above. It lets Faraday get the horse moving faster, taking out the second of the three while Vasquez gets a chance to change course, cutting wide around the gun so that the men manning it have to decide whether to turn and go after him, Faraday in his unrelenting approach, or the steeple where Billy and Goodnight are continuing to pick them off one by one.

 _Go_ , thinks Faraday. _Keep riding, keep going_. He aims his peacemaker at the last of Bogue’s guys on horseback, taking him down before he’s descending from the horse and on his feet to get out the dynamite.

There’s dissension at the Gat right now, with the men insisting they turn it to the steeple, but they’re so distracted covering fire from Vasquez and now Faraday that there’s no time for a full reload, the gun haphazardly aimed towards Billy and Goodnight inside the steeple. Unlucky for them, but good for Faraday, who’s able to get close enough without them realizing until he’s twenty feet away.

Of course, his luck runs out right around then. 

“Not another step,” the one-eyed bastard standing on the Gatling’s cart warns, not hesitating as he shoots twice, hitting Faraday once in the thigh, then the arm. Faraday grimaces, seeing Vasquez falter in the corner of his eye, but Vasquez recovers quickly once he lets himself fall to his knees, takes out two of the men on the cart, leaving Faraday’s one-eyed friend and a buddy. “I’m warning you.”

Faraday drags his feet as he keeps walking forward, the blood loss starting to kick in and make things dark and woozy. 

The third shot goes through his stomach, a fraction of a second after Vasquez takes out the last lackey. That leaves Faraday with four gunshot wounds (five if you count Vasquez’s) and one man left with the gun. One man is still too many, but right now, Faraday needs to take him and the gun out. He can’t give Bogue a chance to tear apart this town, not another inch of it. Faraday tries to push himself forward, staggering to his feet only to collapse again.

The last man descends from the cart, gun in hand, pressing the barrel of it to Faraday’s forehead.

“I got two bullets,” he says. “So, when I’m done with you, I’m gonna go back there and kill that pretty little bonded partner of yours. He’s already half dead, I’d be doing him a favor.”

Faraday spits in the man’s face as he struggles to get to his feet and land a punch, but his weakening body won’t let him. The idiot above him just laughs and keeps smoking, pressing a spurred heel into Faraday’s shoulder to keep him down on the ground, digging sharp cuts into his skin and keeping him weak.

“You touch him, I’ll kill you,” Faraday warns.

“You’re already going to be dead,” the cyclops promises. 

Faraday opens his mouth to reveal the dynamite, but before he can say anything clever, the cyclops looming above him staggers back, an arrow through his last remaining good eye. He seems alive, aware, for a few seconds, before he hits the ground. Faraday winces and scrambles to his feet to get the cigarette before it goes out, turning to find Red over his shoulder from twenty feet away, turning tail to get back to the town.

Bogue, Faraday thinks, they probably still have to worry about Bogue.

“Vas,” Faraday calls out, “Hey, you okay?”

“Why did you have to get shot so many times?” Vasquez complains, but Faraday isn’t paying attention. He’s dragged himself to the cart and is searching for rope or something to lengthen the charge. He eventually finds himself a few rags that he’s able to tie together, slumped and bleeding all over the wood of the cart. The exertion is making him sweat and time seems to slip away, long enough for Vasquez to make it beside him. 

Faraday looks at the dynamite and the length of cloth and rope he’s managed to tie.

“We’re gonna have to move fast,” he admits, knowing that’s not really possible.

“We could make it to one of the dugouts,” Vasquez says stubbornly. “Just need to stay awake, until we blow it.” The pain shows in his expression, how his lips tremble slightly, the furrow of lines on his forehead. Faraday looks at his cigarette, then at Vasquez, and wonders if this is it. 

What do you say, exactly, when you’ve just met your soulbond and this might be your last day on earth with them?

“Don’t,” Vasquez says, like he already knows what Faraday is thinking. Mind-reading, no one’s said that’s a benefit, so maybe Faraday is just disturbingly easy to read. “We halve the pain, we get back, we heal.”

“Just need to get back.”

Vasquez takes the cigarette out of Faraday’s lips and stares down at the length of rope and cloth. He starts to tear away at them, much to Faraday’s protest, dragging them to their feet.

“Hey, Vasquez, what the fuck do you think…” 

Vasquez keeps pulling them back, ten feet, fifteen, then twenty. When they’re twenty-five feet away, he takes the cigarette and hands it to Faraday, gesturing to the dynamite and miming the throw that he expects Faraday to do before they run and dive for their cover. “You always did want to blow something up, right?”

 _Yeah, but not us_ , he thinks, but can’t see any other way around this. No one ought to have a gun like this in their possession and who knows if there are surviving hired guns on their way out here. Grimacing, Faraday studies the cigarette for a long moment before turning to Vasquez, closing his eyes and stealing a desperate kiss because if he’s about to die, he wants to do it with that last memory on his lips.

He doesn’t kiss Vasquez with his eyes open, because if he does and ends up seeing any hint of pain on Vasquez’s beautiful face, he’s not sure that he’s going to still have the strength to do what needs to be done. He can already hear the last of the remaining men in Bogue’s army charging towards them, insisting that if they can get to the Gatling, they can turn the tide.

That can’t happen.

“Shame we never got to that promise,” Faraday says, his heart beating like it’s stuck in a tin drum as he holds the dynamite and the cigarette a foot away from each other, gathering up the courage. “I think I would’ve ended up liking that.”

“We’re not dead yet,” Vasquez insists.

Faraday doesn’t have the heart to tell him that they’re as good as, swallowing back that grief as he stares at the distance between them and the gun. It’s an easy throw and Faraday’s got good enough aim to not worry about missing.

Grimacing, he steals one last kiss before he gives in to their fate. It’s fire, dynamite, and a crashing explosion loud enough to deafen a man. That’s what’s waiting for them, but it’s the only way forward.

Faraday lights the wick of the dynamite and throws, yanking on Vasquez’s shirt and stumbling at the fastest pace he can muster to throw them down into the dirt, driving their shares wounds into the unyielding force of the ground. They don’t make it past the lip of the ridge, exactly, sprawled on top of it when the Gatling goes up in a cloud of fire and smoke.

They’re far enough away that the only damage they’ve taken on is the singe of burns on their skin, but as far as Faraday’s concerned, even a feather dropping on his head at this point would’ve been too much on top of the rest of his wounds.

“Vasquez,” Faraday mumbles as he tries to open his eyes, searching around the scorched earth for where he’d ended up. “Alejandro,” he pleads, but then instead of begging and writhing, he looks inwards and tries to push away the pain to be rational.

 _You’d have felt it if he died_ , he tells himself. _You’d know._

He’s in a world of pain, but nothing worse than before apart from a few extra burns. He feels like it’s bad luck to say as much, but Faraday suspects that they might just have managed to scrape by and survive. That thought quickly starts to erode when the pain of his and Vasquez’s gunshot wounds start to catch up to him, reminding Faraday that he might not have been blown up but that doesn’t mean he’s untouched. 

“Ale, just hold on,” he murmurs out loud, unsure if the other man is even unconscious to hear him. “We’re gonna, we’re gonna get this right,” he mumbles, starting to feel a little breathless and woozy himself as the world starts to darken at the edges. “We’re…you and I…”

 _We’re gonna be great_ , is what he thinks. _And I am gonna keep you so safe._

Fine job he’s doing so far, getting himself shot to hell and back. He’s been crawling along the edge of the dirt to get to Vasquez’s side, but eventually his body refuses to move any further. Faraday collapses a few feet away from Vasquez’s prone, unmoving body. With the last of the effort he’s got left, he manages to get his fingers atop Vasquez’s wrist to feel the slow, thumping pulse still beating.

They’re not out of the woods, but that’s just enough to give Faraday enough hope to know that they’re not dead. It’s the last thing he remembers thinking before the pain swarms and soon, he’s no better than Vasquez, giving in to the blackness surrounding his vision.

 _Got a promise to keep_ , is the thought that he holds tightest to, even when everything else is too hard to focus on. 

It's this thought that he keeps close to his heart, letting it soothe him into a state where he can’t feel any pain at all, his fingers barely grazing Vasquez’s as they lie there in the dirt with the sun beating down overhead, not a gunshot left to be heard.


	2. The Ranger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Healed from Rose Creek, Faraday and Vasquez head off together, but things come to a head in Idaho Springs when they run into a ranger set on causing trouble for the both of them.

When Faraday opens his eyes to the world, he’s in a staggering amount of pain. He’s been moved somewhere, because he’d passed out under blue sky, but there’s a ceiling above him now, but once he places himself, all that he can think is that if he didn’t have a soulbond, then he’d surely be dead. The second thought he has is that if he feels this way, then what about Vasquez? Struggling to sit up, panic rising in his chest, he searches the room and finds, in a panic, that Vasquez isn’t here with him. 

“Easy, now,” comes Goodnight’s voice, pressing gently on his shoulder to lie him back before he settles back into his own bed. “They’re fine, they’re just not here. The doctor didn’t want to put us in the same room as our better halves, so they’re next door recuperating.”

“Why the fuck not?” Faraday spits out as he lets out a pained cry when he tries to sit up, only stopping when he hears a gutted sound from the next room over. It doesn’t take a genius to know who made that sound so soon after Faraday made himself feel the sharp press of pain. 

“Something about an echo,” Goodnight explains. “They seem to think that putting bonded partners together will let the pain feed off the other’s wounds, going around and around again and only making things worse.” He looks rough, what with the bandages wrapped around his body and if Faraday recalls correctly, he thinks he remembers Goodnight plunging from the top of the church to the ground with a gunshot to each shoulder, from the remnants of that last Gatling attack.

Not that he’s comparing wounds, but even though Billy and Goodnight definitely have cause to feel hurt right now, theirs still pales in comparison to what Faraday’s managing through.

“Vasquez!” Faraday shouts, pounding on the wall and hissing when the motion causes him pain.

Judging from the echo of pain in his distant hearing, Vasquez felt that too. “Lie down, you idiot,” Goodnight snaps at him. “Unless you want him to hurt more.” 

It’s sound logic and the only thing that stops him squirming around is the memory of that pained cry from behind the wall. Closing his eyes tightly, he tries to fight back the distress of being so damn far from Vasquez and instead tries to focus on himself. He’s been a selfish bastard most of his life, it shouldn’t be difficult. 

“What happened?” he asks, fighting past every inch of pain to focus on something else.

“You took out the Gat,” Goodnight says. “Managed to get yourself shot a few times more in the process. Lucky for you, Red made it out to cover the rest of your little assault, but some of Bogue’s men were on their way back to try and get control of the thing. From what Red says, the two of you didn’t get clear enough in time. Threw the dynamite and it kicked you back. So, if we are keeping count…”

“Which, you seem to enjoy,” Faraday mutters.

“You’ve been shot three times and bruised and scraped up from a dynamite explosion, not to mention you took a soul-shot to the arm,” Goodnight says, gesturing with unsteady fingers to the bandage wrapped around Faraday’s upper arm. “You and Vasquez, is it?”

“Apparently,” Faraday says, drawing out the word into more syllables than it deserves. “Turns out that poor fucker gets to experience all my joys and pain, but really just the pain part. You know how that goes,” he says, seeing as the bond between Billy and Goodnight had been clear from that first day in Volcano Springs. He’s been struggling to sit up again, trying to look Goodnight in the eye as they speak.

That attempt is interrupted by a commotion at the door when the town doctor enters, looking frazzled and exhausted. Faraday can’t say he envies the man. Truthfully, he doubts he’d even be lying here alive if it weren’t for the fact that Vasquez had the poor luck of lessening his pain by taking half of it, but that doesn’t exactly make things easier on the doctor, who now has more patients to tend to seeing as they avoided some shallow graves, but barely. 

“Lay back down,” the doctor spits at him. “If you don’t want to do it for yourself, think of that man in the room next to yours.”

“Why won’t you let us stay in the same room?” Faraday complains, even as he obeys the order and lies back.

“So that you can try getting to your feet and checking on him and vice-versa?” The doctor shoots a knowing glare at Faraday and Goodnight both. “That pain’s just going to keep coming, all while you idiots try and make the other feel better and end up tearing stitches, bleeding fresh, and causing a mess. Lie back and let us do our work. Once you’re healed enough, we’ll switch the rooms. I don’t know how many ways I can say how close the lot of you were to death’s door even with those bonds of yours,” he says. 

“I’ve always been lucky,” Faraday boasts, as if he had anything to do with his survival. 

The doctor glowers at him before he gets down to work. There’s a stinging salve the doc applies to his wounds that Faraday winces at, but soon enough there’s relief on its heels. He changes Faraday’s bandages, adjusts his position in the bed and then he checks for a fever, but judging from the lack of worry from the doc’s face when he presses his hand to Faraday’s forehead, that’s not a problem to worry about.

He’s in a hell of a lot of pain, but looks like he might have a path out of the woods.

The doctor repeats the process with Goodnight before he heads next door, leaving Faraday to collapse back in the bed, grumpy and pissed off that Vasquez is so far away from him. One look at Goodnight tells him that he’s not the only one feeling that way.

“What happened?” Faraday finally asks. “I saw them go through the last of the Gat ammo, trying to take you two down.”

“I took one shot to each side of the collarbone,” Goodnight says, pointing towards them. “Knocked me right off the steeple, which might have ended up saving Billy’s life. The shock of landing knocked him flat down and he took a few grazes to the stomach,” he goes on, pointing to those areas that are well-bandaged. “You boys weren’t so lucky.”

“I think the final count between the both of us was four, not to mention the char from the dynamite,” is Faraday’s sarcastic retort. Honestly, Faraday could’ve been shot a half a dozen more times and he wouldn’t care, so long as he’d made it out alive. 

Goodnight doesn’t look so amused to be discussing their near-death experience. He’s been lying back in bed since the doctor gave him hell for sitting up, but for lack of anything else to entertain him, that piercing gaze of his is fixed on Faraday.

“I heard a commotion down in the church before the Gat went off. Is that really the first time you discovered that you and Vasquez are a bond?” he sounds genuinely surprised, which is irritating to Faraday.

Then again, given the pain he’s in, irritated has been the general feeling since he came back to consciousness. 

“Bond only really kicks in when you feel pain,” he reminds Goodnight, as if a man with a soulbond of his own needs this lesson. He’s not keen to tell Vasquez’s whole story, especially not the parts that involve a romance-happy ranger who deserved what he got, but he thinks that he can brush over it and still explain why he’s not a complete idiot for not knowing. “Vasquez has been in hiding for the last few months, hasn’t even so much as stubbed a toe. He was real careful here, too. I didn’t know,” he admits.

“Not until a bullet pierced your o too solid flesh,” Goodnight maligns.

“I swear to god, you are so annoying sometimes that when you talk, it’s almost as painful as being shot,” Faraday complains, “I bet you Vasquez can feel it, that’s how much I’m suffering. Speak normal,” he accuses. 

Goodnight only laughs, which makes him even more irritating to Faraday. Instead of turning over in bed like he wants to (seeing as that would only bring him a great deal of pain), he slumps back and closes his eyes to avoid having to talk with Goodnight any more about how long it’d taken him to realize that Vasquez was his and he was Vasquez’s. 

The good news is that at least they don’t have to feel mired in guilt that they want to be together, seeing as they’re not fucking over some non-existent partners. It turns out that it’s just each other that they’ve been fucking over by not seeing what’s right in front of their faces.

The next few days stretch on in the same routine, though the next day after the doctor is through, his assistant brings in something that she hands to Goodnight, who immediately devotes all his attention to reading.

“Billy managed to write something,” he says, staring down at the piece of paper with a soppy look on his face that Faraday hopes never to wear, no matter how fond he’s becoming of Vasquez. 

Glancing up hopefully at their nursemaid, Faraday gives her an expectant look. “What? Nothing for me?” he grumbles, when there isn’t anything else in her hands. 

“He told me to tell you,” she begins with no explanation as to which _he_ this happens to be, “that he’s in a ridiculous amount of pain because of you, under which account means that if he were to write even his name, you’d have woken up from the discomfort of it all. There was some Spanish in there I’m pretty sure was swearing,” she admits, leaning over to slide a new pillow under Faraday’s head. When she’s close enough, she gives him an amused smile, voice subdued. “He said to get better, then he’ll see you and that’s better than any little poem.”

That’s the man Faraday’s throwing his hat in with and damn if it doesn’t send a funny, warm feeling through him at how he’s already come to appreciate him.

Get better, he tells himself. At the very least, he tells himself that he needs to heal enough so that their little helpers will make good on their promise and put them in the same room. Faraday fixes his stubborn mind on that one task and lets the doctor do whatever he wants when he attends, lets him smear foul smelling pastes on him, poke his wounds, dress him up, and tolerates Goodnight’s rambling without trying to drag himself up from bed and stuff a handkerchief in the man’s mouth to shut him up.

His efforts pay off, though, because the pain starts to ebb and fade away as days turn to weeks. Faraday’s not so worried that the stitches will burst, though the one in his stomach remains touch and go. 

“Hey,” he tells the doctor, while he’s poking and prodding at him. “It’s been long enough of me being stuck here with the dictionary. I’m healed.”

Goodnight snorts derisively behind the man, but even without that noise, the doctor doesn’t look very convinced. “You’re _starting_ to heal.”

“I’m healed enough for you idiots to let Vasquez stay in the same room as me,” Faraday heatedly snaps back at them. “Would you just do the switch already? Goodnight won’t say it, but my charming company ain’t enough for him either.” He can tell, with the pinched way his brows knit every time they can hear Billy’s voice from the next room, which Faraday understands, seeing as any time he so much as hears a hint of Vasquez speaking, he’s already thinking about staging a jailbreak to get there.

The doctor looks between the two of them before his gaze slides down to the wounds Faraday is sporting, his linen shirt loose to allow them to do their work.

“If I switch you lot around, I need a promise.”

“Consider it minted.”

“You’re still bedbound,” the doctor warns. “Not to move for another week.”

“Scout’s honor,” Goodnight pipes up, apparently jumping aboard this train of Faraday’s now that he sees the hope for it to actually get out of the damn station.

Grumbling, the doctor shakes his head as he glances between the both of them. “Couple more days,” he says. “One, maybe two at most, and then we’ll get everyone switched around. Goddamn nightmare patients,” he mutters on his way out, though Faraday doesn’t care about his bad mood when he’s got a promise that he just needs to lie here for two more days before he gets to see Vasquez again.

“Only shame of it is,” Goodnight remarks, a day later when they’re talking about the move, “your face is all pocked with stone and scars. You could ask Leni to pretty you up for when you see him,” he teases.

“I’m the prettiest thing he’s ever seen,” Faraday snipes back, as if the words he’s saying are somehow dignified. He doesn’t care, though. The only thing he cares about is seeing with his own two eyes that Vasquez is breathing and healing, never mind that he already knows when the man is in pain, because he feels it himself.

True to the doctor’s promise, two days after the tentative all-clear, there is a great helping of hands from the village as they switch Goodnight into the other room with Billy, bringing Vasquez in to share the space with Faraday. It’s the first time he’s seen him since he’s woken up and part of him’s been strangely worried, though he doesn’t know why.

He’d seen Vasquez when he’d gone down, nothing worse has happened since then. True, they’ve got a lot of healing to do, but it’s only going to go up from here. “Easy,” Faraday snaps when he feels a twinge in his knee when the schoolteacher forces Vasquez to take a step too quickly. “You don’t have to be so damn polite to them,” he gripes at Vasquez. “Tell them when you’re hurting.”

“It’s just my knee,” Vasquez protests, murmuring a soft ‘gracias’ as they fluff his pillows and settle him in.

This is why the villagers prefer Vasquez to Faraday, it’s not even a well-kept secret. Still, Faraday wouldn’t be pleased if they so much as scraped Vasquez’s arm, which means he sees out the helpful villagers with an angry glare that they fucked up a simple task, sure that one of them is likely to spit in his food tonight.

Then again, maybe Faraday ought to be nicer to them for the fact that before they’d started to move Vasquez in here, two of them had quietly and without comment moved the second bed closer to Faraday’s, creating one large space for the two of them to share. Vasquez is barely more than a few inches from him and even though he knows there’s no chance of them getting up to something, it’s a comfort to feel the warmth of Vasquez’s skin and the steady pace of his breathing right beside.

“You okay?” Faraday asks, when they’re left alone with a warning not to ‘fuck yourselves up’.

Vasquez lifts his shoulder in a mild shrug. “You know exactly how I feel, _guero_ , isn’t that how this works?” 

“As if either of us actually know how the hell any of this works,” Faraday says, unable to turn onto his side without causing a strain, but he manages to shuffle-shift his body over just a little so that his hip is pressed to the warmth of Vasquez’s, the closeness giving him a sort of peace. “You scared the shit out of me out there. If it weren’t for this little bond of ours, I would’ve thought you were dead.”

That brief, panicked moment before reason kicked in had been the most terrifying of his life and it’s not one he wants to relive anytime soon.

“We did it, though,” Vasquez replies. “We saved Rose Creek from Bogue.”

“Now we’re doomed to stay here until we heal,” he complains, having been bored and sober for so long that the town is starting to feel like a coffin, trapping him in. 

“Not forever.”

“No?” Faraday replies, giving Vasquez a curious look. It’s not like they’ve had a chance to sit around and talk about a future, so this is the first time it’s come up, but Faraday’s willing to admit that he hadn’t exactly thought about what he’d do when his body had mended and all the holes had closed up. “You want to hit the road with me, is that what you’re saying?”

“If I leave you alone, you will just get injured and hurt me without my knowledge,” Vasquez says. “Better to stick around you, keep myself safe.”

“Oh, is that the only reason?” Faraday taunts.

Vasquez smirks back at him, Faraday’s pulse kicking up thanks to the wild mischief and promise in the curve of those lips. “No other reasons. Not like I like staring at your face, touching your body, kissing those lips…”

Faraday gives a frustrated groan when his body decides that it wants to attempt to react pleasurably to those words, but given that he’s currently mostly immobile and the pain is overwhelming, the best he musters is a flagging interest. Reaching out, he drags bent knuckles over Vasquez’s cheek, sliding his thumb over Vasquez’s lower lip. 

“Fuck you,” is Faraday’s annoyed reply, in direct contrast to the soft affection of his touch. 

“When we’re healed,” Vasquez agrees to that demand.

The days that stretch out in front of them are difficult. Faraday finds that even breathing is a difficult task some days, when he feels a persistent ache in his gut that he’s not sure he can name as Vasquez’s or his own. With their lack of mobility, the best they can manage is absent touches that ghost over skin and the comfort of a warm body beside them. Of course, it’s the peace of mind that Faraday truly appreciates, because knowing that Vasquez isn’t hurting any worse than he is gives him a chance to rest.

Soon, they move from lying in bed and nursing their wounds to making plans for the future.

“North,” Faraday says, “You ever been to Canada? I reckon we could head that way. Bounty wouldn’t follow your head there.” 

They’re both able to sit and stand for limited periods, by now. They take it in turns, though, taking slow walks around the room until weakness forces them to sit. Right now, Faraday’s the one sitting while Vasquez takes shaky steps around him, his hand reaching out to grasp hold of Faraday’s shoulder when he needs the support.

Judging by the dismissive look on Vasquez’s face, Canada’s not an option.

“Why not?” Faraday replies with a sigh, without even hearing Vasquez’s audible disagreement.

“Too cold for my blood.”

“Well, damn it, Alejo, that’s half this country too, then,” Faraday snaps irritably. 

“Not all of it,” he’s quick to counter, collapsing with a big huff of breath right beside Faraday. “I don’t mind here, or Colorado. Dry cold,” he clarifies. “Somewhere with civilization to build fires and wear heavy coats. Could go to Mexico,” he suggests, with hope in his eyes.

“You really think bringing me down to Mexico is a good idea?”

Vasquez makes a face, one which Faraday knows intimately already. It’s his ‘I can’t believe I’m agreeing that you’re right’ face. 

“It’s that damn bounty of yours,” Faraday says sharply, complaining like it’s been his lot in life dealing with it for so long. “Maybe we can see about getting rid of it somehow. Could take one of your weapons, make like the Pigeon brothers?”

“Claim someone has killed me?”

“Only a few persistent lawmen would remember you if you laid low. You could always just cite uncanny, unfortunate resemblance,” Faraday says, because if not that, then they’re going to have to keep lying low. “That bastard ranger, it ain’t right that even after he’s dead, he’s screwing you over like this. After what he did to you, it ought to be him on a poster.”

Vasquez snorts, the sound hollow and tired. “You know that men like him never face consequences. He wanted a soulmate badly enough that even when I was not it, he’d decided that I was. Still…” He trails off, something flickering over his face that vaguely resembles confusion.

“What?” asks Faraday, as he slowly presses a palm to Vasquez’s knee to help in levering himself to his feet, ready to take his turn around the room.

“No, nothing,” Vasquez replies with a shake of his head. “I’m just wondering, who put the bounty out. He stumbled off into the wilderness, people should have just thought he was missing. Instead, in a week, there are papers with my face on it. I don’t understand.”

Faraday knows as well as Vasquez that it often doesn’t take much for people to slander and lay blame on others. Considering that Vasquez is a Mexican living in the United States where plenty of folks would be happy to see him hang, Faraday wouldn’t be surprised if some idiot issued that bounty just because they had a personal beef with him.

“Well, it’s a problem we’re gonna deal with eventually,” he says, grunting with mild pain as he begins his first loop of the room. “Until then, let’s go to California,” he says, eyes sparkling with promise and hope. “There’s gold in those hills. Better yet, there’s alcohol in those towns.” He walks around until he’s looming over Vasquez, standing between his sprawled-open legs and cupping his cheeks with calloused hands.

Huffing in laughter to the point his shoulders shake, Vasquez stares up at him with an irritated scowl on his lips that doesn’t match the fond softness in his eyes at all. “We have all the gold we need.”

“Yet, none of the alcohol,” Faraday feels compelled to point out their dry, sober, sad existence.

“So, West?” Vasquez suggests, sliding his palms slowly over Faraday’s thighs to coax him in, leaning back and muttering bitter Spanish profanities under his breath when the ache assaults him, but Faraday’s real careful when he crawls over top of him and makes sure the weight of his body isn’t pinning him down as he lays atop him. That said, there’s nothing that says that Faraday can’t steal the kisses he’s owed, even if they only leave them both panting, breathless, and frustrated.

“West,” he agrees, distracting himself with the scrape of Vasquez’s cheek on his, the warmth of his lips, the brief flash of pleasure before the ache returns. It’s a short window before all this becomes too much, but as always, he intends to take advantage of it.

Soon, they’ll be out together on the road. They’ll heal and they’ll be seeing Rose Creek in the dust. Faraday only needs to keep reminding himself that it’ll happen and eventually, their wounds will heal so well that they’ll be nothing more than a bad memory. 

Until then, he’s got plenty to keep him occupied.

* * *

This whole riding with someone, this thing, it’s new for Faraday.

He’s done it before, but usually they’d part ways after a few weeks when the benefit they provided each other faded away. Traveling with Vasquez is a whole new barrel of fish. Part of Faraday had expected their bond to fix any potential frustrations, but it turns out that just because you’re bonded to someone, it doesn’t mean you don’t see the parts of them that are irritating. It takes a while to adjust to Vasquez’s snoring, just like the other man takes a few weeks to come to grips with Faraday’s tendency to pass out drunk most nights. They still squabble and bicker over the smallest, stupidest things, which just goes to show Faraday that things are never bound to be perfect between them.

The growing pains of their relationship aren’t exactly the comfortable soulbonded match Faraday had always imagined as a boy, but at the same time, it’s not like their bond is the only reason they’re together.

Even without it, Faraday can imagine them having set out together, just not so tightly twined. With it, it means that there’s a comfortable connection between them that he can feel even through the worst of the irritation when he thinks about how this is likely permanent. He’s not the only one who needs time alone, sometimes, either, and they’ve been quick to negotiate terms of that. Some days, they don’t see each other for most of the day, with Vasquez riding the trail ahead just out of sight. It makes reaching camp at night and reuniting that much better. 

With their wounds healed, that’s the other thing that’s been so different about riding with someone. Normally, Faraday wouldn’t spend the early hours of morning watching the embers of the fire die out while he presses his fingers into someone’s skin so he can see the prints, kissing them, opening them up, and fucking under the stars.

He takes the good with the bad, even stubbornly able to admit that even the most annoying of the bad is starting to become endearing as time passes. 

They head to California, as discussed, and spend a few weeks there until Faraday gets in trouble with the local law for swindling one of the deputies in a border town in a game of poker. They try Kansas briefly after that, but someone in town apparently found Vasquez’s face so handsome that they had plastered an unreasonably large number of his wanted posters around town.

“Colorado?” Faraday suggests on the heels of that misadventure. It’s not quite October, so it’s still warm enough for Vasquez to agree, even if Faraday intends to take them through the mountains for a little snow. He plies Vasquez’s agreement out of him with liquor, food, and sweet, tempting touches of his hand on Vasquez’s dick.

Vasquez agrees on the condition they get rooms and don’t sleep under the stars, but money is not a problem after Rose Creek and Faraday’s ability to turn one coin into five with his skill at poker. 

They reach Idaho Springs just as night is coming on. There’s little cause to be riding in the mountains in the dark and Faraday’s aches and pains have started to bother him enough that he knows Vasquez is feeling it too, despite the man’s refusal to ever complain about when he’s hurting.

Stubborn, noble bastard just keeps his head down and bears it, never voicing out loud that he’s hurting as much as Faraday.

“We’ve got space for the horses,” the innkeeper assures them as she strokes Jack’s flank, only for Faraday’s horse to start kicking up a storm, the girl smartly stepping back even as she works to ready a space for him. “The only other folks we’ve got rolled into town a few days ago looking for gold, but soon enough they’ll move on when they don’t find any. Well, it’s them and the ranger.”

Faraday sees Vasquez freeze up in the corner of his eye. Rangers aren’t good news in general, to him, but when your soulmate happens to be a wanted man, that’s even more dangerous. He hadn’t heard that Idaho Springs was sheltering lawmen, though, so maybe he’s not a regular fixture.

Faraday’s real grateful for Jack’s antics, seeing as they keep the innkeeper from seeing the panic-stricken look on Vasquez’s face as she struggles to maintain some control over the horse. “Ranger, huh?” Faraday asks calmly.

“Yeah, some man named Masterson, he rode into town after helping process a bounty up in Leadville.”

“You sure about that name?” Faraday asks, his own calm evaporating quickly. Sure, it could end up being a coincidence that there’s a ranger in town with the same name as Vasquez’s kill, but Faraday’s not sure he’s ever believed in coincidences like that.

“Tall? Dark hair? Handlebar mustache?” Vasquez steps into the conversation.

“You know him?” the girl asks, with surprise.

“Friends of ours do,” Faraday interrupts smoothly to try and nudge this whole conversation away from drawing suspicion on the both of them. He keeps smiling, seeing as smiling ain’t suspicious, as he pays the girl before dragging Vasquez and their things away to their room upstairs above the saloon. Faraday tugs Vasquez’s hat lower as they walk, an arm around his shoulders to force him to keep his head bowed every time they pass someone.

He can’t read Vasquez’s mind, but he doesn’t need that talent to feel the tension draped across his shoulders. They don’t dare speak out loud until they’re guaranteed the privacy of their little room, where Faraday instantly locks the door and digs out his gun so that if word gets out about a Mexican in town, he’s ready to shoot anyone coming through that door without a warning. 

“No, this can’t be happening,” Vasquez is rambling, pacing the room behind him, “no, no, no.” His hat has been thrown on the table and he's digging his hands through his hair. “He can’t be here, he’s a ghost, that _maldita_ man, he cannot be alive. I killed him. There’s a bounty on my head because I killed him, I don’t understand.”

Truthfully, neither does Faraday. Not a lick of this makes sense to him, but Vasquez’s panic is real and heartrending. 

Reaching out, Faraday tangles his fingers into Vasquez’s shirt to tug him into his lap, trying to get him to just sit _still_ for a second while he processes the whole situation in his head. Faraday knows he’s not the world’s smartest man, that he could probably use Sam’s smarts right about now, but he needs to work this out because Vasquez isn’t in a place to do that. 

“You said you shot him,” Faraday reminds Vasquez. “Where?”

“He was dead, I killed him, he…”

“Alejo!” Faraday snaps. “Come on, damn it, we’re not solving anything unless you calm the fuck down. Did you see his corpse?”

“No.”

“Where did you shoot him?” Faraday asks again, trying to figure out how the hell this is happening. Worse, he knows that if they actually want to verify that Masterson is the same one from Vasquez’s past, they’re going to need to get a confirmation and that means getting Vasquez in a position where he has to see the man’s face.

Vasquez’s brow is furrowed, but he doesn’t move from Faraday’s lap, staring into the distance as he taps two fingers to his heart. “Two, here.”

Faraday reaches over to take hold of Vasquez’s fingers, sliding them down to where he’d have to shoot in order to strike the man twice in the heart. “You’re sure it was here?” he verifies, sliding those fingers up Vasquez’s chest a little higher, to where two shots would’ve struck collarbone and muscle – damn painful, but not lethal. “You’re sure it wasn’t here?”

There’s the briefest moment of confusion that washes over Vasquez’s face and it’s enough for Faraday to think, _shit_ , because he doesn’t blame Vasquez for not processing the situation clearly enough, but it looks like them both assuming that Masterson has been dead the whole time isn’t so true anymore. 

“Why would he make a warrant, then?” Vasquez is already on the next problem, absently rubbing his thumb over Faraday’s shoulders, digging it in and massaging like he needs something for his hands to do.

On this, though, Faraday has a few suspicions he’d always been quick to bury because of what they implied. “I heard talk, once, in town, that the ‘dead’ on your poster was not advised,” he admits, because at the time, he’d been grateful for that rumor, but something he didn’t pay much mind to. He also didn’t like the idea of Vasquez in a jail cell, either, so he’d still avoided those posters with his life. “If he’s still after you, if he still wants you to be some fucked up soulmate of his, what better way than putting a bounty out on your head and letting other people do the work for him?”

The look on Vasquez’s face is the darkest Faraday has seen since the man had shot McCann into a coffin and Faraday doesn’t blame him. He suspects that it’s going to be a fight between them to see who gets to put the man down. After all, if you’re already wanted for killing a man, what harm is there in committing the crime?

“We don’t know it’s him, yet,” Faraday sighs, compelled to be reasonable seeing as Vasquez doesn’t seem ready to fill that position right now.

“How could it not be? You heard the girl!” he spits. “Masterson! Ranger, with the same moustache!”

“Or it’s some criminal who found his body after he did die, stole his badge and made himself look like the man,” Faraday counters. “Maybe there’s nothing nefarious going on. Maybe you really did kill him and someone’s just taking advantage of the situation.” In a tight bind, or a similar spot, Faraday knows he might do the same if the opportunity presented itself. 

Vasquez sighs and slumps forward into Faraday’s chest, the misery clear in every feature on his face.

“You know what needs to happen,” Faraday says.

“We need to see if it’s really him.” Vasquez has pressed his forehead to Faraday’s shoulder and looks unwilling to move, muttering sharp curses into the space of Faraday’s bare skin where his shirt has slipped away.

Faraday knows that there’s no time like the present to find out what they’re actually dealing with. This could be some stranger who took a dead man’s name and appearance, a con man looking to score. Maybe it’s that and Vasquez really did kill the ranger, but Faraday gets the feeling that it’s not. 

His gut’s telling him that this is Masterson and those lethal shots of Vasquez’s weren’t so deadly after all. Of course, that does leave the question as to why Masterson allowed the world to think he was dead, but then, did he? Maybe Vasquez saw the warrant and assumed it was because he killed a ranger.

Hell, maybe Masterson had just kicked up a fuss and got Vasquez a bounty because he’d been rejected. Not to mention, shooting a ranger twice is still a pretty damning offense, even if you didn’t actually kill him, like you’d thought. Or maybe all those rumors are true and the order on Vasquez is _alive_ , not dead, so that Masterson can have someone bring his prize back to him.

Faraday rubs his hand at the small of Vasquez’s back, kissing his temple. “C’mon, up you get,” he says, his tone in line with how he talks to Jack when he’s kicking up an unholy fuss. 

Eventually, Vasquez manages to get to his feet, letting Faraday get up to dig through their bags, handing Vasquez his hat and bandanna for his face, shoving plain, boring clothes his way. “You’re not wandering downstairs with those flashy pants of yours,” he warns. “Get changed.” While Vasquez is changing behind him, Faraday is arming himself to the teeth in case things go bad.

It looks all wrong to Faraday’s eye to see Vasquez dressed in boring linen and beige, but if that’s what keeps him alive, then Faraday will insist he’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen in the color, if need be.

“He doesn’t like to drink,” Vasquez says, sounding ill-at-ease to be able to speak about Masterson with that much familiarity. “If he’s there, he won’t be at the bar.”

“Okay,” Faraday replies, and tries to think about where else in the small town that he might head. “Brothel?”

Vasquez makes a face, but nods. Faraday can’t say that he’s eager to head there and see the type of man or woman that Masterson is trying to get his hands on, but at least it means they’ve got a clear walk downstairs at the saloon without having to worry. Faraday stops to ask pleasantly about back doors at the brothel.

After the filthy response he gets, he rewords it.

“Other ways to get inside,” is his flat, unamused reply. The saloon owner tells them that there’s a side door they use to get the liquor inside, which is good enough for him. 

Faraday leads the way, careful to keep Vasquez behind him, lest the other man get any ideas. They’re both armed and while Faraday knows this could turn south, he’s telling himself that the only thing they’re doing right now is information gathering. Glancing around town to make sure no one’s watching, he opens the creaky door slowly, entering a dim hallway that looks to lead up behind the counter in the brothel.

“Hey, stay behind,” Faraday warns, nodding to some of the shadows in the dark hallway. 

Vasquez looks pissed about being given orders, but he obeys. Creeping forward, Faraday nudges the curtain aside to find a small room with about three men at various tables, being attended to by barkeeps and beauties. There, in the corner, is a man who seems to fit the girl’s description of Masterson, though nothing about him would signify a ranger. There’s no uniform, no identification. For a brief and beautiful moment of hope, Faraday thinks they’re in the clear.

Then Vasquez presses in against him, able to see himself, and lets out a pained sound, something that sounds like grief and rage dying in his chest.

“Shit,” Faraday exhales, feeling like he’s been punched.

“It’s him,” Vasquez confirms, his words steeping in misery. “That’s Masterson.”

Faraday lets the curtain slip out of his fingers, handsy as he grabs at Vasquez’s hips to steer him out of this back little hallway to get outside, aiming to put as much space between them and Masterson as possible. He doesn’t even think about speaking until they’re outside again in the sharp bite of the mountain air. 

“It was him, but not in the same clothes,” Vasquez confirms heatedly, sounding like he’s already planning to do what he hadn’t done the first time and kill the man. Faraday wants, so badly, to go along with him, but if they can prove that the man’s still alive, then they can get that damn bounty off of Vasquez’s head. That, or they could at least reduce the reward. Shooting a ranger isn’t exactly something Vasquez can ever profess to be innocent of, not with Masterson’s word against his.

Faraday pushes them back upstairs, locking the door behind them. “So we lay low,” he decides. “We only planned to be here a day or two, we’ll just speed up plans.”

Vasquez nods, but doesn’t say anything. Whatever is going on under the surface, Faraday can’t claim to know, but he’s more than willing to give the man some space to process all of this. Instead of prodding, Faraday distracts himself with getting their things ready to go, but troubles hit when he unearths his flask to find it empty, seeing Vasquez’s is in a similar position. 

The next nearest town is a few days’ ride away and if they’re out of liquor, then the food supplies aren’t going to be much better. Their plan to lie low until they get a chance to leave town comes to a head right then, as Faraday makes some mental calculations about whether it’s safe enough to head downstairs. Masterson doesn’t drink, right? If he sticks to dark corners, leaves Vasquez upstairs, they’ll be fine. Honestly, the truth is that if he stays in that room waiting for a man, he’s going to go insane. He needs to be doing something.

“You’re not going alone,” Vasquez had said when Faraday had shared his plan. “Not with him here.”

“Ale, I swear to god, you better keep your head down,” Faraday says, having convinced himself that it’s safe _enough_ , but when it comes to Vasquez, he’s paranoid about losing the other man. He already knows asking Vasquez to stay up here alone is a stupid idea that’ll get shot down, so he doesn’t even mention it. “You’ve changed since then enough and he’s not going to be at the bar, right?” He’s convincing himself of this and possibly sounding desperate.

That fear that Vasquez can see right through is confirmed when he starts to falter, giving Faraday a wary look. “Is this worth my life?”

“Is our life worth sitting in this room waiting for him to charge in and not stocking up supplies to get the hell out of here?” Now, Faraday is speaking from that pit of fears he’s been suppressing. “Word’s gonna hit that there’s a Mexican here from Rose Creek and if he puts two and two together, we’re going to need to move damn fast to get out of here and that means we’ll need the food and drink,” Faraday says as a headache starts to press in, though in this case, he’s not entirely sure it belongs to him. “You know I’m gonna protect you, right?” 

“Always,” Vasquez agrees, his own face starting to drain of its color as he starts to realize the reality of the situation they’re in. “That girl from the stables was too willing to talk about the people here in town. He’s going to hear about it, we’re going to need to be able to get out of here quickly.” What neither of them say is that though Rose Creek has set them up for life in riches, it’s also put their names to notoriety, which means that as soon as someone in town hears that Faraday is here with a Mexican, it’s not gonna take much longer for people to find out _which_ Mexican.

God damn, does Faraday need a drink. 

“We’ll get what we need, try and figure out what folks are saying about us, then we come straight back,” Faraday negotiates, even though Vasquez is already in their bags to fetch coins. Before they can leave the room, Faraday leans forward to yank at Vasquez’s sleeve, hauling him back into the circle of his space, wrapping an arm around his waist so he can steal a kiss from him. 

It’s resistant and hard at first, but soon enough Vasquez melts into it; with it goes some of the tension from the rise of his shoulders. They both need this, Faraday figures, because while they’ve been in some tight spots, it’s never been something like this.

No one’s ever wanted to take Vasquez away before, not like this, and if Masterson gets his chance, Faraday can’t see him hesitating.

Things are going well enough for a while. The innkeeper’s got a decent enough inventory that he loads up the counter with cheese, salted meats, honey, and other sustenance that’ll last them a while on the trail. Tequila and moonshine aren’t a problem, but he’s out of whiskey, though he’s got it in a barrel out back.

“Give me ten minutes,” he says. “I’ll have it ready for you,” he promises, clearly encouraged along by the gleam of the gold coins sitting on the counter between them. The door creaks open behind them and Faraday stares forward, kicking a foot sideways at Vasquez’s boot to tell Vasquez to duck his head down. “Be with you in a second, just grab a table,” the innkeeper tells the newcomers. There’s three of them, judging by the sound of boots.

Faraday should’ve known that he’d burned through all the luck left in his life back in Rose Creek. He should’ve expected things to go badly, but there’s still no accounting for the icy stab in his gut when he hears the shocked Midwestern drawl of, “Alejandro?” from behind them. 

Vasquez sags forward, grips the counter with white-knuckled hands, his breathing sharp. 

“Praise God above, I’ve been praying for a chance to see you again,” he keeps going, desperation cloying and disgusting in his voice. Faraday already hated this man before this, but he’s doing a good job of making Faraday really detest him, now. Vasquez hasn’t turned around, so Masterson keeps crowding in like he’s been welcomed. “Ever since things happened between us, I thought about a second chance. I knew it had to mean something that your shots didn’t strike my heart, that we were meant for one another and I just had to see you again. Now, here you are.”

That’s the final straw. If Faraday doesn’t say something, this is going to end in blood. 

He clears his throat loudly to catch Masterson’s attention, stepping in with a clear aim to disabuse Masterson of the idea that he’s, somehow, getting a second chance. The only second chance here, Faraday figures, is him getting to put a bullet through the man’s skull. “Ranger,” Faraday says, overly polite to avoid spitting in the man’s face. “You’re wrong about this being your second chance, which is a funny thing to hear from a man who plastered Vasquez’s face all over a piece of paper.”

“It’s not ranger, not anymore,” Masterson replies back, as calm as ever. “Ale, look at me.”

“I wouldn’t call him by that name if I were you,” Faraday replies, suppressing the fury in his voice. “Bad things are going to happen if you keep calling him by that name.”

Masterson finally drags his attention off Vasquez, having been greedily staring at the line of Vasquez’s neck from where he stands with his back to Masterson. “Who the fuck are you?” Masterson asks, all the pleading in his voice evaporating to be replaced by thick irritation.

That seems to be the breaking point for Vasquez. He turns, a knife in hand, and Faraday’s never been prouder of that man, especially not when Masterson twitches warily, clearly remembering what happened last time. “Don’t talk to my soulmate like that,” he warns, looking to Faraday briefly. He’s seeking permission for _something_ with a searching look and while Faraday hasn’t got a clue what’s going on, he shrugs and figures why not?

He trusts Vasquez, after all. With a brisk nod, he gives Vasquez leave to do whatever it is he’s got planned.

That trust becomes a little wobbly when Faraday feels the sting of the knife in Vasquez’s hands against the meat of his palm, hissing as Vasquez digs initials there. J and F, that’s what he’s carved in so gracelessly. Faraday inhales raggedly and holds up his newly bloody, marked palm, because he knows what Vasquez is getting at.

Proof, they’re giving Masterson proof that he’s never going to have a second chance. 

“So, it’s like that,” Masterson replies, with a disappointed huff. “I was dismissed from the rangers because of you. They’d only put that bounty out to get you back when I admitted what you’d done to me, what I did to you. They said that getting your name on those papers was the last thing I’d get before they took away my badge, my responsibilities.”

“Am I supposed to feel sorry? You were going to take me like I was land, plough and pillage,” Vasquez snaps at him.

“I loved you. I still love you!”

“No, that’s never been true,” Vasquez snorts dismissively. “I’ve lived in corpse-ridden houses because of you. Feared for my life because I thought I killed you and had to pay that price. No,” he says, shaking his head and his finger in Masterson’s face. “No, you could never have loved me.” 

Faraday keeps silent beside him, but he presses a hand to Vasquez’s neck, cupping the warm skin there and squeezing gently to offer his support. He can feel the tension ramping up in the bar around them, like people are just waiting for someone to fire the first shot, but Faraday’s hoping they can avoid that. 

“You’re going to leave us alone,” Vasquez tells him. “We will leave town in the morning, but until then, if we see your face, Faraday and I will get to argue over who gets to shoot you. It will probably be me and he will let me, because he’s very fond of me,” he tells him, calmly. “I’m already wanted for your murder. You made it very easy to want to kill you again.”

Masterson doesn’t look half as disappointed as Faraday might have imagined he would. True, there’s a weak resignation to the way he stands and stares at them, but there’s also still more fight than Faraday wants to see out of a defeated man.

“Go on,” Faraday says. “Be smart.”

“You’re making a mistake,” is what Masterson says, collecting his hat and setting it on his head again.

“Only mistake I’m making is letting you walk away, but I’m not stupid enough to murder a man in cold blood here at the bar with so many witnesses.” Vasquez doesn’t stop glaring at him, hand on his gun in clear warning. “Go,” he says darkly. “Forget you saw me. Tomorrow, when I ride away, I will forget I ever knew you.” It’s a lie, Faraday knows, because that man has haunted Vasquez’s dreams since the last time they parted ways, but there’s no reason to hand him that kind of power.

Masterson should be scared shitless, but the worrying thing here is that instead of being fearful, there’s this blank expression on his face. Faraday’s not sure, but he swears that there’s even something like interest in his eyes, like he’s staring at Vasquez and seeing something he likes. It makes something in Faraday’s stomach turn and he wishes that there weren’t so many people surrounding them.

One shot through the head would leave no doubt about whether the man’s dead or not and it’d deal with all their problems.

“I’ll leave you be,” Masterson vows.

“And the bounty?” Faraday cuts in, because that’s equally as important. “If you really adore Vasquez so much…”

“ _Guero_ , stop encouraging him,” Vasquez mutters lowly, only loud enough for him to hear.

“…well, then, if you do, you’d have it removed. Here you are, walking and talking and breathing. You don’t even seem pissed off. That bounty isn’t a way to get back to him. You’re going to tell them to remove it.” He’s glaring at Masterson, now, fury burning in his eyes.

Masterson, though, seems like he’s already on the same page. “Of course,” he hurries to insist, leaning back over the bar to ask the bartender for a pen and paper, scratching it hard over the torn off label of a bottle before handing it to Faraday. “My word,” he adds, giving them a piece of paper that says that he intends to ride out after this and do exactly that, signed with his name.

Faraday ought to be more suspicious. Men like Masterson don’t just _do_ things like that, unless there’s something in it for them. He should be looking for the trick in this, but with Vasquez grabbing at Faraday’s shirt from behind, he hasn’t got much time to think about what’s wrong with this picture (though there is no doubt in Faraday’s mind that something _is_ wrong).

Maybe it’s just that through this all, Masterson doesn’t look defeated, but _eager_. It’s like he’s got a plan that Faraday isn’t privy to.

“We’re going in the morning,” Faraday reiterates. “We don’t want any trouble.”

“Nor do I,” is Masterson’s flat reply, not blinking as he stares at Faraday.

“Come on,” Vasquez says, his voice low in Faraday’s ear. “Or I will shoot him.”

Faraday doesn’t dare turn his back on Masterson, protecting Vasquez as they head up the stairs. Through it all, he and Masterson stare at each other, neither yielding or flinching. There’s no room for weakness or for letting that man think he has the upper hand. Something is wrong here, but he’ll worry about that when they’re clear of Idaho Springs and can form strategies in relative safety.

* * *

Faraday hates being stone-cold sober, especially when a town is as rife with drink as Idaho Springs is, but he knows well enough that getting drunk right now is a bad idea so long as Masterson is still within the city limits. It’s a strange thing, though, because all of a sudden, Vasquez has calmed down since they’d had their little encounter with the man. Faraday can’t understand why the hell he’s gone so easy, but it’s driving him nuts.

“Faraday,” Vasquez chides when Faraday keeps working his fingers through his deck of cards, eyes on the door. “He says he’ll leave us be.”

“You trust that piece of shit?”

“No,” Vasquez replies with a snort. “I trust that it’s two against one and even a cowardly delusional former ranger knows better than to take those odds.” He reaches out and covers Faraday’s hand with his, squeezing tightly. “Besides,” he adds, taking steps until he’s in Faraday’s personal space, standing between his open legs, “I think there are better ways to spend time until day breaks and we leave.”

Getting away from Idaho Springs is the only thing Faraday has been thinking about, but given the way Vasquez is rucking up Faraday’s shirt so that he can slide his fingers teasingly along his side, it appears that he can be compelled to think of other things. 

“That’s not fair,” Faraday accuses, even though he’s not doing anything to dissuade Vasquez. In fact, he’d go so far as to confess that the way he’s pressing into the curve of Vasquez’s palm is more than a little encouraging of what Vasquez wants to get up to. “We need to stay on our toes.”

“I prefer you on your back,” Vasquez says. “Please,” he adds, more serious. “Joshua, I need distraction. We will get out of here, I think, but he doesn’t deserve to steal a night from us. Please?” he asks again, with a desperate look in his eye that Faraday already knows he won’t be able to say no to. 

Faraday lets out a show of a sigh because Vasquez already _knows_ that Faraday is weak for the man, that even though they’ve done this so frequently on the road, Faraday’s always up for it because it feels like they’re making up for lost time.

“Fine, you fucking menace,” Faraday agrees, wrapping his legs around Vasquez’s waist and leaning back sharply so he can tumble the both of them down to the mattress. It’s better than liquor, he finds, because with Vasquez sliding into a straddle over his hips, he can start to feel all his troubles evaporating like smoke. 

For a while, both of them are content to trade kisses, moving from heated ones with panic limning each touch to slower, fonder kisses. Their limbs are tangled together and they spend nearly an hour doing nothing more than kissing, heavy touches to go alongside, as the moon rises higher into the night sky.

Eventually, though, the kissing isn’t enough. “Hold on,” Vasquez murmurs, pressing a kiss to the hickey he’s left on Faraday’s neck. 

Faraday licks his lips in anticipation when Vasquez digs into their bags and finds the slick they’d picked up in the last town. The jar is half empty, already, which is only because there’s nothing better to do on a dusty trail sometimes, but right now, with Vasquez on top of him, he doesn’t think about inventory or supplies so much as the sweet drag of Vasquez’s dick as he ruts in the space of Faraday’s thighs. He knows that he ought to drag this out, offer a little more foreplay, but given how this day has gone, Faraday’s not sure he has it in him to deal with hours of teasing.

He just needs to feel Vasquez inside him, steady and full and hot, like a promise in itself.

“You ready for me, _amorcito_?” 

“I’m insulted you’re even asking.”

Vasquez’s soft huff of laughter is a fine thing, especially combined with the way his eyes turn soft as he stares down at Faraday, stroking his thumb up and down the strong line of Faraday’s neck, the blunt edge of his nail dragging over the marks he’s already made. Sometimes, Faraday doesn’t know whether what’s more torturous – the prolonged waiting to be fucked or the heart-squeezing way he feels when Vasquez stares at him like that. Faraday’s enraptured, caught staring upwards at him, that the danger they’re in doesn’t register until it’s too late.

It all happens in a split second.

The softness in Vasquez’s eyes turns hard, his relaxed smile caught in shock and panic. Then, Faraday feels it, the pain catching up to him at the back of his head. The heavy and unconscious weight of Vasquez on top of him faintly registers as the world starts to go dark around him. 

“Someone hit us in the goddamn head,” Faraday mumbles out loud, his mouth feeling stuffed with cotton and his vision double. The heavy weight of Vasquez’s body on top of him goes away suddenly and Faraday squints up to see a man looming above him, gun in hand. “Masterson,” he spits out, struggling to stay conscious.

Masterson looks at them with a cold look in his eye, bending down to loom over Vasquez’s body considerately, stroking his hair like a lover would. Faraday, while weakened, sees red as he feels rage start to consume his body. 

“You leave him alone, you son of a bitch, don’t you touch him again, you…”

Masterson glances up at Faraday, then down to Vasquez. “Don’t worry,” he says, speaking to Vasquez and ignoring Faraday’s presence completely. “It’ll all be over soon.” He draws back the butt of the gun and strikes Faraday in the back of the head, which creates a pool of sticky blood in Vasquez’s hair, but worse, Faraday knows that even sharing this pain, he’ll be unconscious within seconds.

“You’re gonna regret…” is all Faraday musters before Masterson drags him off the bed, along the dusty floor by one arm, his line of sight making Vasquez’s unconscious form the last thing he sees before he goes dead weight, being yanked along by Masterson. 

He's not sure how long he’s been out, but the shock of icy water in his face is what jolts Faraday back to consciousness, panic swarming him as he tries to place his surroundings. 

“Wake up, Faraday!”

Faraday sputters and spits out water from his mouth, scrambling to find his gun (not on him and thirty feet away, in fact), staring up at Masterson. “Where is he?” he demands, thinking of Vasquez’s prone form on the floor. They’re outside, enough of a distance from Idaho Springs that the lights are visible, but the noise from the town isn’t. “I swear to god, if you killed him while I was…”

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Masterson cuts him off, pressing a boot to Faraday’s torso as he pins him in the dirt. The chill of the ground and the air, combined with the little Faraday’s wearing, is no match for the red hot fury warming the cockles of his spiteful heart. “The whole point of this is to get him back. I’m not going to kill him,” he guarantees, looking down at Faraday sympathetically. The relief of that statement last about two seconds, until Masterson opens that asshole mouth of his again. “I’m gonna kill you.”

“Are you kidding me? You really think Vasquez is gonna want to be with you after you kill me? He’s gonna feel it,” Faraday spits at him.

“I think that with enough time, Alejo will come to understand that there are stronger loves than soulmate bonds,” Masterson says, studying the guns laid out in front of him. “I thought about torturing you. Maybe I would take some fire to your skin or make you beg for your life, but you’re right. Ale would hurt because of that.”

Faraday struggles, finding that his hands have been bound by coarse ropes behind his back. Is Vasquez even conscious yet? Faraday needs to get free and get to one of those guns, not wanting Vasquez to stumble into this not knowing what’s going on, only to have Masterson attack him. He leans hard into the ropes as he rubs them back and forth, stifling the hiss of the self-inflicted pain, hoping it’ll rouse Vasquez if he’s still unconscious.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Faraday demands, stalling for time. “How did you even get into the room?”

“You think that just because I was a ranger, I don’t know how to pick a lock? You two gave me plenty of help, distracted as you were. It was a pretty little show, but I had work to do.”

Faraday struggles harder against the rope, wanting to get to those guns so he can put a bullet through that bastard’s face as soon as he hears that Masterson had been watching for even a millisecond. Although maybe there’s something to be said for shoving the barrel of a gun up his ass before taking Faraday unleashes every last one in the chamber. In his fury, anything’s possible, as far as Faraday’s concerned.

Right now, he’ll do anything to get Vasquez’s name off Masterson’s lips.

“He shot you, isn’t that clear enough that he doesn’t want those mealy little hands of yours on him?” Faraday snaps at him, not paying much mind to the fact that pissing off a man who wants to kill you is a bad idea. He can practically feel Sam and Goodnight’s disappointment radiating through him, but the trouble with a temper like his is that it’s difficult to control.

It’s even harder staying calm when Masterson aims to kill him and then take Vasquez. He knows it won’t happen, knows that Vasquez will kill the man, but any second of discomfort and panic and pain that he feels before he gets a chance is more than Faraday can deal with. 

“I survived,” Masterson reminds him. “I think that’s a sign, that the universe thinks that I should keep going after him. Who else could heal from shots like that and keep going?”

This ain’t a pissing contest, but Faraday would love to show him the bullet wounds in his body that he’d kept moving after. Bearing down into the ground beneath him, he presses hard and scrapes his wrists against the ground until the rope burn makes him bite down on the stifled sound of pain. There’s no way that Vasquez didn’t feel that.

Seconds later, there’s a pained feeling in his chest. It’s the blunt dig of a nail and thumb into the space just above his heart, but it’s as clear as someone shouting in his ear.

Vasquez is awake. Vasquez is coming. 

Faraday hopes the bastard plans to swoop in like a conquering hero pretty damn soon, because from the red flush to Masterson’s face, Faraday’s been successful in working him up to the point of murder. The ropes are no looser around Faraday’s hands, even though he’s been working them, and there are a whole lot of guns nearby that can be used to kill him. Faraday’s quick to notice that while Masterson’s pistol is there alongside Faraday’s, only _two_ of Vasquez’s three pistols currently lie amongst their ranks.

“I’m going to say this and I’ll say it once,” Faraday says calmly as he manages to get to his knees, no longer struggling as he kneels in the dirt in the ground outside Idaho Springs, the mountainous terrain allowing for cover from the eyes of the town. What the ground doesn’t cover is the shadow-shape he sees approaching from behind, Masterson’s torch stuck in the ground giving the man a shape.

Long, lean, tall, even in the dark, more beautiful than anyone else Faraday has seen in his entire life.

He needs to keep Masterson staring at him, needs to keep his focus on Faraday, before he decides that if he can’t have Vasquez, the next best thing to do is kill him. 

“He’s not yours,” Faraday says. “Honestly, he’s not even mine. Pretending that just because we share pain means that he was always gonna choose me is something only an idiot would believe. Now, I’ve had my fair share of moments, being an idiot,” he promises, “but not with him. Only reason he’s with me is because he _chooses_ to be with me. Did the universe do this? I don’t know, but if it didn’t, I’d have paid attention to what Alejo wanted. Seeing as he didn’t shoot me twice through the chest, I’m taking that as a sign that I’m doing better than you are right now,” he says, scrambling to his knees to inch closer to Masterson. “So, shoot me, if you want,” he challenges. “Only, you’re going to end up killing me knowing that you’re killing the man Vasquez chose over you.”

Masterson gets his hand on his gun, his fingers shaking with fury as he lifts it to aim at Faraday’s forehead, but rather than beg and plead like the former ranger expects (and likely wants), Faraday grins. 

“What the hell are you so happy about?” Masterson demands. “Why are you grinning like an idiot?”

“Because I love you,” Faraday says, staring beyond Masterson’s ear where Vasquez is standing, six towering feet and more of righteous fury, his pearl-handled pistol inches away from the back of Masterson’s head. Faraday works to move a few inches to his side on his knees, knowing exactly what’s going to happen next.

“You what…?” are the last words Masterson will ever say, blood and brain splattering all over Faraday from where he’s kneeling in front of him. Grimacing, Faraday shakes his hair, trying to loosen stray bits of it, but he refuses to even blink as Masterson crumples to the ground, a new hole torn through his head from the back to the front.

The relief is instant and Faraday sinks to the ground, closing his eyes as he lets the sound of Vasquez rushing to help him out of the ropes wash over him. 

“What is wrong with you?” Vasquez demands and though Faraday knows he’s furious, the only thing he hears in his voice is the worry. “You don’t talk to a murdering asshole like you want him to shoot you!”

“Had to keep his eyes on me,” Faraday insists, seeing as if Masterson had even so much as looked back, their whole dashed off little plan would’ve gone up in smoke if he’d ended up accidentally killed Vasquez. “Check that bastard’s pulse,” he warns lowly, because despite the shot through the brain, he doesn’t trust the idiot to be brainless and able to slide his way back from the edge of death just to spite the both of them.

Vasquez doesn’t do anything of the sort, instead he’s on his knees beside Faraday, slicing open the ropes with a knife and grabbing Faraday by the shoulders to haul him into a kneeled embrace, shaking the man as he forces him back to look at him before hauling him in again. The rope burn is visible on Vasquez’s wrists, proving that his plan worked, but instead of feeling victorious, all that Faraday feels is the rest of the energy bleeding out of him. Tired, out of sight from peering eyes, he’s willing to let himself collapse into Vasquez’s demanding, worried embrace.

There’s no safer place in the world than those two arms.

“If he’d shot you…”

“He didn’t,” Faraday cuts off Vasquez’s panic about what _might_ have happened. “Look at me, look, I’m alive. You’re alive, and that ranger is a piece of shit corpse back there.” He leans back, enough to slide his fingers through Vasquez’s hair, pushing curling strands of hair from off his forehead so he can press a possessive kiss there, dragging in a slow breath to calm himself down. “Hey,” he gets out, hoarsely. “You’re alive. I’m alive, we managed to kill that bastard. It’s over.”

“It’s over,” Vasquez echoes, a funny look on his face, like he’s not sure he believes it. 

Considering that until a day ago, they’d both figured Masterson for a corpse, it’s strange to think that this happened at all.

“Hey,” Faraday coaxes, brushing Vasquez’s hair back, trying to coax some levity into this night. “You got any other ex-anythings that I need to be worried about? Seeing as this time went so swimmingly.”

Vasquez gives a tired snort, hand cupping the back of Faraday’s neck firmly, a possessive touch that’s keeping Faraday’s heart from racing right out of his chest, letting him avoid thinking about how close of a call this all was. “Only madman in my life now is you.”

“How about,” Faraday suggests as he struggles to haul them both onto their feet, “for a little while, we keep it that way.”

They`re both a little unsteady as they lean on each other, though Faraday`s not sure if that`s the lingering effects of being knocked out or whether it`s the adrenaline starting to crash around them. He still wants to get well-clear of Idaho Springs, but for different reasons now. Hand to his pocket, Faraday`s eyes flash with new purpose and he smacks Vasquez`s chest when all those distilled thoughts come together.

“ _Cabron_ ,” Vasquez hisses at him. “What the fuck?”

“No, shut up, I need to think!”

The mean look on Vasquez’s face tells Faraday that he desperately wants to say something about Faraday’s capacity to do that, but he doesn’t.

“He’s not a ranger anymore, he admitted he only put that bounty on you for spite, and I got a piece of paper that I bet will look real good in Sam’s hands if he presents that to someone in charge.”

As they start to shuffle back to their room to collect their things, Faraday looks to Vasquez, waiting for him to be impressed and thrilled with his deduction. Vasquez doesn’t look very impressed at all and though he’s giving Faraday a fond look, it’s not tipping the scales of ‘Faraday, you genius’.

“What?” Faraday demands. “It’s a good plan.”

“It is, and it’s the one I thought about when you pocketed that paper the first time,” Vasquez says. “Besides, that’s not the biggest thing that I have to think about right now.”

“Yeah, I know, Alejo, but he’s dead and you don’t have to think about him for the rest of…”

Two fingers on Faraday’s lips both shut him up and stop their wobbled walk back to their room. Faraday turns to give Vasquez a confused look, not sure why that fond look on his face has somehow managed to bloom, though if this is because he finds it charming when Faraday is a little behind the eight-ball, then Vasquez is doomed to be charmed for the rest of his life.

Faraday swats those fingers away, not appreciating being treated like a child. “What?” he demands, more heatedly.

“ _Te amo también_ ,” Vasquez says, sliding his fingers from Faraday’s lips to rest over his heart. “You picked a very interesting time to say it, though.”

“Never meant it more,” Faraday promises, feeling the swell of heat in his face as he realizes what Vasquez is saying to him. He isn’t intending to take back his words, from earlier, means exactly what he’d said when Vasquez had been wielding a gun like an avenging angel had found human form. He’s known since he’d been a child that his soulmate was never going to be normal.

He should’ve considered that someone made for him would end up suiting all his peculiar desires and turn-ons. 

“Seriously,” he says, nudging them along so they can get back to the room, draped arm in arm, hobbling along so they can get their things and escape this little town before it wakes up and discovers a dead ranger on the outskirts. “I meant it.”

“I know,” Vasquez promises. “Come on. You have something that will clear the bounty on my head and as much as I love you too, I also love the idea of not having to look over my back every single moment just as much.”

Maybe he ought to feel a little put-down and jealous, but truthfully, Faraday is just as eager to make that happen. Still doesn’t mean that he doesn’t stop their retreat back to the rooms a few times to steal fumbling kisses of relief, hands groping Vasquez’s skin to prove that he’s alive, whole, and still his. 

There’ll be plenty of time for that later, he tells himself, buoyed by the simple truth that now that Masterson is gone and they’ve got a way to free the hold on Vasquez, they’ve got all the time in the world.

Having nearly been robbed of all that time, Faraday doesn’t intend to waste any of it.


	3. The Path Forward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now that Masterson has been dealt with, Faraday and Vasquez have a chance to set a life for themselves without a bounty hanging over Vasquez's head, which is more than either one of them ever expected.

They’ve returned to Rose Creek for some normalcy after the whole disaster with Masterson, the both of them feeling in need of some rest and relaxation. Despite weeks having passed, Faraday is willing to admit that he’s greedy for the safety of knowing they’re surrounded by friends and allies. Traveling back had been a little troublesome, given that the both of them were twitchy around rangers and lawmen in general, not to mention they’ve been sleeping with at least two locks and a chair pressed up against the door. Faraday still doesn’t know why they’d thought one lock would’ve kept a stubborn idiot like Masterson out, but he needs to bury that thought into the shallow grave along with Masterson, whose corpse rests barely a foot under the ground on the outskirts of Idaho Springs.

Even if they did want to get out of town and get to traveling again, they’re on express orders from Sam to lie low while he fixes the bounty on Vasquez’s head, seeing as a ranger who faked his own death to pull Vasquez into his web shouldn’t be enough of a reason to tug a noose around a man’s neck and Sam seems fairly convinced that he’ll be able to spin his actual death as reasonable self defense against a disgraced ranger.

Problem is, he’s starting to get bored.

“Would you stop that?” Goodnight complains, of Faraday’s constant fidgeting and finger tapping atop the table. He’s pinching the bridge of his nose like he feels a Faraday-induced headache coming on. “Where the hell is your better half?” he asks, in the accusatory way that tells Faraday he’s actually pissed and this isn’t good-natured ribbing. 

“Said he can’t sit still while Sam’s gone,” Faraday complains, “he’s been out in the fields getting sunburnt.” He knows, because his own damn sensitive skin is starting to pink.

“Well, then, convince him to come back,” is Goodnight’s huffy remark.

Faraday’s eyes drift to where Vasquez left his saddlebag, an idea percolating in his mind that shows promise. “You know, I think I just might,” he agrees. “Thanks for the idea, Goodnight.”

Billy shoots Goodnight a wary look. “Just remember when we can’t sleep later, it’s your fault,” is what he has to say on the subject. Faraday can’t help his smirk as he tips his hat to his fellows, heading upstairs with Vasquez’s possessions in hand, sifting through creative ideas in his mind. At first, he thinks about getting one of the locals to run out to the fields to deliver Vasquez a message that his attendance is requested, but then Faraday thinks about the bond between them.

Ever since they’d met, the bond between them has only hurt them both. Isn’t it time that Faraday start exploring ways to play with that connection without attaching shitty memories to it? 

Digging into Vasquez’s bag, Faraday starts looking for something very _specific_ , grinning when his fingers latch on the object. That lasso of Vasquez’s is starting to fray in places and is liable to be replaced any day now. His little idea, just a spark when he’d been drinking with Goodnight and Billy, is starting to grow into a fully-fledged plan that he actually thinks might not be the stupidest thing in the world. True, he could probably head out into the fields and just fetch Vasquez back, but where’s the fun in that?

It's been months since their wounds from Rose Creek healed and weeks since the ones that Masterson caused, more than time enough to heal them to scars and bad memories. 

It’s been one unfortunately long list of injuries for the both of them, stretching on so that Faraday hasn’t been able to try something out that he’s thought of since he was a sex-obsessed teenager with a soulbond, dreaming up ways to enjoy himself with his partner. Unravelling the lasso, Faraday makes sure that the door isn’t locked as he strips out of his clothes and carefully folds them in the chair, sprawling on top of the covers as naked as the day he’d been born.

The last time someone had put ropes against skin this hard, they’d been fighting for their lives.

It’s time to make a better memory out of it. 

He doesn’t dare go near the wrists because of what happened with Masterson, but Faraday works the lasso around his hips and tugs it snug and firm before he moves to loop the lasso a little higher on his chest. Sprawled naked in bed with a fraying lasso, Faraday tugs at the knot to tighten it, gasping when he feels just the slightest frisson of pain, but this one’s matched with pleasure given the anticipation of what’s to come.

Biting his lip, he knows it’s just a matter of time, which is why he reaches for the headboard and loops the remaining knot of the lasso around it, like he’s leashing himself up.

Distantly, he can hear the doors downstairs being pushed open and the noise of boots on the floorboards. “…Faraday, is he…”

“Upstairs,” Billy’s voice drifts up. “Goody, that’s our cue to leave.”

Faraday’s grin only widens when he hears spurs on the wooden staircase, which means Vasquez is on his way to him. When the door opens and Vasquez stands there surveying the scene, Faraday does his best to look casual and calm and comfortable, even if he’s naked, tied up, and the edge of frayed ropes are digging into his skin hard enough to put marks on Vasquez as well.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Faraday greets him.

“ _Joshua_ ,” Vasquez replies, staring at him with disbelief and a great deal of affection. Faraday’s come to know every single one of Vasquez’s expressions and most of them come built in with a healthy helping of, ‘what on earth is Faraday doing now’. He looks hungry, at the same time, dropping his hat on the desk (the very same as the first night they’d done this together, how’s that for nostalgia) and begins to approach Faraday on the bed. “Is that my lasso?”

“We both know it’s on its last legs,” Faraday says, squirming a little in anticipation. “I figured we ought to send it out in style.” 

Vasquez runs his hand along the fraying rope as he bends to pry off his boots, setting them under the bed neatly, which is the kind of stupid attention to detail in their shared space that makes a swell of affection rise in Faraday, who shouldn’t be so easily warmed by that kind of thing. Maybe it’s being nearly blown up together or maybe it’s sharing all their physical wounds, but hell if he hadn’t meant it when he’d told Vasquez he loved him.

Vasquez strips down to his shirt and trousers, settling into a loose straddle over Faraday, and he thinks that maybe the wounds had nothing to do with it at all. Maybe it’s as simple as this; Faraday went and fell in love, something that started even before he figured out just what Vasquez is to him.

“Come on,” he coaxes, trying to drag himself out of this particularly soppy train of thought. “I’m naked, tied up, and you’re just staring at me. Aren’t you gonna do anything about it?”

“Thinking where to start,” Vasquez counters, running his palms up and down Faraday’s sides before he slips one hand away to his back pocket, unearthing a small bottle of slick that he must have stolen from out of Faraday’s things.

Faraday’s breath catches in his throat. “Thought that broke when Masterson got me.”

“Maybe it’s a sign that it didn’t,” Vasquez replies, but he’s not paying much mind to Faraday as he tips it back and forth, like it’s a magical item in his possession. Faraday’s been hard for this since probably before Idaho Springs, seeing as they’ve done it so few times and haven’t since the affair with Masterson, but he tries to tamp down that desperation from his eyes.

The squirming and rocking of his hips to try and get some kind of attention probably isn’t helpful. Vasquez lets out a huff as he ridicules Faraday in Spanish (not that he can understand the words, but he gets the gist of the tone), working to slick up his fingers as Faraday debates begging for it. Turns out he doesn’t need to worry, not when Vasquez leans forward with his free hand and pins it center mass of Faraday’s chest, keeping him in place. Faraday’s quick to open his mouth to demand more, but then Vasquez takes advantage of his sudden stillness to slide two slick fingers slow and steady into him, an experience he’s still getting used to. 

What he can’t help, even now, is the bark of vindictive laughter when Vasquez makes a face.

“Never expected that, did you?”

“It’s somewhere between strange, painful, and a turn-on,” Vasquez confesses, squirming a little himself as he feels that strange push of discomfort and mild pain himself as he prepares Faraday. “I still don’t like it.”

“You only don’t like it because you don’t get fucked at the end of it,” Faraday accuses. “You selfish infant.”

Vasquez shrugs his shoulders guilelessly, like he doesn’t mind the accusations. It’s not like Faraday’s got much room to speak, seeing as he’s no better when it comes to wanting to at least get the reward after all the preparation. Still, Faraday being dead on accurate about the reason for Vasquez’s little pouty lips doesn’t stop the man from taking his sweet time preparing Faraday for this, remaining annoyingly dressed the whole time.

“You should take that off,” Faraday insists with a nod to Vasquez’s shirt, his arms trapped at his sides, or he’d have ripped it right off as helpfully as you please. 

“I should?”

“Definitely, yeah, you definitely should,” Faraday agrees with a serious look on his face, ruined only by the sharp little sound he makes when Vasquez slips in three fingers and starts to work him looser, easing him from pain to that low burn of pleasure he likes so much. “Wait,” he says sharply. “Not yet, not until you’re done.”

“Who’s selfish now?”

“Yeah, yeah, shut up,” Faraday grumbles, seeing as the last thing he wants is those fingers slipping away in the middle of this. “Priorities, I got it. You keep doing that with those fingers of yours, then we can discuss nudity.”

“You’re still talking,” Vasquez complains. “I thought fucking you would keep you quiet.”

“Do better, then,” Faraday says, smirking as he works down onto Vasquez’s fingers, which does have the effect of robbing him of most thought for a burst of a moment. When he feels that dizzy burst settle, he feels the pressure of Vasquez’s body on his relenting, as he leans back to look for something, fingers sliding out of him and leaving him empty and disappointed. “Hey, what are you…?”

The _snik_ of a knife through rope is his answer, as Vasquez cuts away the lasso, freeing Faraday’s arms. 

“Maybe I want you to undress me,” Vasquez says.

Those words don’t need any more encouragement, not once the ropes are pushed away and Faraday is free again. He leans up to frantically tug away at Vasquez’s shirt, dragging his thumb along the line of his collarbone before he reaches for Vasquez’s hands to shove them down to his trousers, fingers covering Vasquez’s as they work together to get the pants off, even as Faraday leans back so that Vasquez can kick them away with his underpants, looming sweaty and naked over Faraday.

For a second, Faraday does nothing but lean back against the pillows, his thumb dragging up the line of Vasquez’s neck, over the beard that desperately needs a trim, and then into the hair that definitely needs the same. He half looks like a wildling that Faraday’s managed to corral into civilization, but honestly, so long as that wild thing is his and only his, Faraday’s not complaining. 

“Now?” Vasquez murmurs, like they’re sharing a soft secret in the space between them, leaning down to kiss Faraday, mumbling the next words against his lips, “Can I fuck you now?” Rocking against Faraday, the drag of his dick is a promise and Faraday reaches back to brace himself on the headboard, a hungry look in his eyes.

“So long as you do it like this,” he insists, glad when Vasquez coaxes Faraday’s knee over his shoulder, not flipping him over to fuck him into the bed like they normally would. Their usual positions are nothing to complain about and Faraday’s a pretty big fan, but tonight, he wants it like this. It’s been so long since they’ve had this and Faraday’s damn well not going to miss getting to see Vasquez’s face as he takes Faraday apart, piece by piece. Vasquez slides his calloused palm over Faraday’s bent leg, coaxing the knee over his shoulder as he works his other large palm under Faraday’s ass to angle him just enough so that Vasquez can slide into his slickly prepared entrance, the both of them letting out strangled cries, stacked one on top of the other.

Once that pain wears off, Faraday laughs helplessly, because the look of pain on Vasquez’s face is too damn funny, the man fucking him looking like he’s getting fucked at the very same time.

Maybe that whole thing about sharing pain and only pain is bullshit. Maybe it all comes down to this, because Faraday will swear on his grave that past the pain, he always feels more pleasure than he ought to, like he’s sharing in that from Vasquez too. Until someone definitively tells him it’s impossible, he’s going to keep on believing what he does. 

“It’s not funny,” Vasquez sulks, as pouty as ever when Faraday laughs at him in the midst of their fumbling around.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Faraday gasps as Vasquez starts to fuck him with that steady pace that always ramps up to something wildly satisfying and uncontrolled, half like trying to ride a bucking bull, “it isn’t just funny, it’s _hilarious_.”

Taunting Vasquez like this is also usually a sure-fire way of getting the man to fuck him hard enough to try and shut Faraday up. Vasquez _knows_ that Faraday does it on purpose, but never seems to care enough to actually stop. This time is no different, judging by the determined glint in Vasquez’s eyes as he picks up his pace, snaps his hips hard enough to push Faraday back against the headboard, slamming it against the wall as Vasquez moves his hand from under Faraday’s ass to tangle in his hair, bringing Faraday in for a bruising, possessive kiss.

The guttural, desperate, “Mine,” Vasquez moans against his lips is probably overkill, given that Vasquez has no competition for Faraday’s affections, but it causes such a swell in his affections that Faraday ain’t planning to stop him.

“All yours, _muchacho_ ,” Faraday guarantees, even being so decent as to pronounce it properly, kissing Vasquez a little slower, with a little more affection than the rough teeth-heavy kiss that Vasquez had seemed so determine to give. Ever since Masterson, intimacy between them has been like this, wildly desperate and needy and incredible, like it’s the last time they’ll ever touch. Faraday figures they’ll eventually get out of the mindset, but right now, he doesn’t care, especially seeing as it’s the first time they’ve properly fucked since then.

Those painful memories start to evaporate in the heat of the moment, the haze settling into his body and clouding his brain. 

It’s Vasquez’s fingers digging grooves into Faraday’s skin, making fingerprints there that bruise to pale blue on Faraday and shadow Vasquez’s skin. It’s the cut they share on their lower lip when Vasquez bites too hard during a kiss. It’s Vasquez’s sweat-slick skin over his own, his fingers wrapped around Faraday’s dick as he fucks him. It’s promises whispered against Faraday’s sweaty shoulder when Vasquez bows his head to mumble in Spanish, like Faraday is still in the dark when it comes to those endearments he murmurs in his native language.

Faraday’s not an idiot. He knows what’s being said.

_I’m sorry, I love you, I’ll protect you better, I’ll never let you go, I love you, I love you, I love you_ , all jumbled together and in a different order sometimes, using different words, but the heart of it stays the same. 

Faraday shifts a little, angles himself so that as Vasquez fucks him, he’s dragging against the spot that makes Faraday’s vision white out with pleasure, his grip on the headboard behind him slipping as he falters and nearly falls half off the bed, but Vasquez grabs him by the hip to steady him. 

“Say it,” Faraday demands, aware that he’s become a one-trick pony these days, that he can’t come without hearing it, but he’s never claimed to be anything but the selfish bastard that he is. “Say it, Ale, you know I need to hear it.”

“I know,” Vasquez murmurs, the thrust of his hips slowing to something sweet and halting and tantalizingly torturous. “Joshua,” he murmurs, peppering gentle kisses over his neck. “I love you,” he vows. “You’re mine.”

It's a hair trigger from that point, and Faraday isn’t even ashamed to admit it, anymore. He comes with barely more than a graze of Vasquez’s hands stroking him, making a mess of his chest, though Vasquez pays no mind to that as he continues to rock his hips forward, buried deep inside Faraday and stalling for a moment, shifting minutely, then dragging out before he pushes in one last time, letting out a ragged cry when he comes.

It takes Faraday a while to catch his breath, panting and trying to find words, but the only thing he can manage is the whine of complaint when Vasquez slides out of him, but he’s not gone long. Soon, Vasquez is back to trap Faraday against the bed, shoving the stray bits of lasso off so that he can wrap himself around Faraday’s body from behind. 

“So,” Vasquez murmurs against Faraday’s ear, brushing a soft kiss to the lobe, “are we going to be sore tomorrow?”

Letting out a delighted laugh, Faraday stretches out his body and tugs Vasquez in so that his head, sweaty curls and all, is tucked comfortably under Faraday’s chin. 

“I don’t know, how about when you can get it up again, you make sure we are,” he challenges, much to Vasquez’s chagrin, from the groan he elicits. That groan slips away to laughter as Vasquez absently strokes Faraday’s side, a warm huff of laughter on his lips as he curls in with Vasquez, tugging the blankets around them to keep them warm until they’re ready to attempt the second round.

“Damn glad I found you,” Faraday mumbles, sliding his fingers through Vasquez’s hair as he pushes it back off his sweaty forehead. “Don’t think anyone else would’ve put up with me the way you do.”

“Mmm, for once, _guero_ , you said the smartest thing in the room,” Vasquez agrees.

He is far too spent to drum up the energy to reply to that slander, but he vows to avenge his dignity by taking away Vasquez’s ability to speak at all later on. Lucky for him, he’s beginning to become very experienced in that line of work and knows it won’t give him much trouble at all. That’s for later, though. Right now, he’s falling into a dream state, lulled on by Vasquez’s deep and even breathing.

Smile on his face, body sated, Faraday drifts off thinking about how damn pleased he is that no one can take this from him, that he won’t let anyone even try. If they do, well, it’s going to feel real good to shoot someone in the face. That thought lulls Faraday into pleasant dreams, with the promise of a second round when he awakes.

* * *

New Mexico is the third state they’ve hit in as many weeks, but with Sam’s letter of permission in his pocket, Faraday feels like a king as he rides into town after town, purpose clear in his every step. Vasquez has been more subdued on this journey, much to Faraday’s constant confusion. You’d think that when you’re traveling around the country to take down every last wanted poster bearing your face, you’d be a little more cheerful. For Vasquez, though, he’s treating it like closing the part of his life as an outlaw is a sombre thing. To each their own, but Faraday resolves for them to get this done as quickly as possible so they can start making a new, happier life for themselves.

They stop outside the saloon in Las Cruces, where Vasquez stops to talk to the innkeeper in Spanish while Faraday grabs his knife from his pocket, turning his attention to all the wanted posters plastered outside the wall. The ones of Vasquez are littered here and there, but he takes great joy in prying them down to add to the growing pile of posters from the other public buildings in town.

“Mister,” a young voice calls to him uncertainly. “What’re you doing?”

Faraday turns to find a young redheaded girl in a paisley dress staring at him warily. Kids aren’t exactly something that he’s comfortable around, despite his heroic actions in Rose Creek. He tolerates them, but apart from that, they don’t really feature in his thoughts so much. Conversations with them always leave him feeling awkward, which is probably clear from the wary smile he gives the girl.

“Someone got things wrong and they think Mr. Vasquez is a bad man,” he says, still prying down posters, even as she wanders up beside him to help, working her nails at some of the stuck-on posters closer to her height. “We’re correcting the mistake.” He’s still got plenty of flaws, of course, but none terrible enough to earn him a noose.

“Are you an outlaw too?”

“No, despite my efforts, I am not,” Faraday can’t help the quip.

“Is he someone important to you, then? Like a soulmate? Is that why you’re helping him?”

Faraday turns to give her a little more attention, his curiosity flaring up while also feeling a strange echo of nostalgia. It feels so long ago, but he still remembers that outlaw couple who rode into town and left Faraday with starry-eyed ideas about what soulmates meant. It strikes him as circular and strange, yet perfect, that he might be the one adult enough to get to explain to someone else. 

“What do you know about soulbonds?” he asks her, crouching down so that he’s at her level. 

She picks at the hem of her dress and stares at him like she thinks that might be a trick question. Briefly, Faraday wonders if this is one of those towns where the whole subject is taboo and no one talks about it, a lot like his had been. Then again, even after talking to Vasquez about it, he’d realized that there were few and far between places that willingly shared all the information they had on soulbonds.

Maybe, thinks Faraday, it’s time to change that.

“I think maybe I got one,” she confesses, after beckoning Faraday to come closer so she could whisper it to him. 

“Why are you whispering?” Faraday whispers right back, like he’s just planning to follow her lead. He leans back to tell her that talking about soulbonds and your mate shouldn’t be a secret at all, when he hears the familiar sound of spurs on the ground, glancing behind him to see Vasquez holding a pile of posters.

The girl looks between them, her gaze narrowed and studious. She’s working it out, Faraday can tell, and it’s only a matter of time before it all clicks. Faraday looks up with a smirk, waggling his eyebrows at Vasquez to tell him that he ought to stick around and play along, seeing as this’ll be good for them. True, maybe he just likes showing off the luck he’s had, but he means it when he thinks about the fact that people ought to know more about soulbonds.

Faraday sees it when the light dawns on her, from her excited gasp and the way her eyes go wide.

“ _Guero_ , what did you tell her?” Vasquez sighs.

“I didn’t say a thing,” Faraday proudly announces. “Come on, I think this little lady deserves a cider for being so damn clever.”

She beams away at the both of them and they head to the saloon where Faraday feels the strangest burst of nostalgia as he and Vasquez sit, drinking, while a young one asks him questions about a soulbond, how it works, and stares between the both of them with awe. Once upon a time, ages back, he’d been that child and a pair of outlaws had kindled wild dreams in his heart.

Lucky him, those dreams of his actually came true to life in a form handsomer than Faraday could’ve ever predicted.

He keeps his hand on Vasquez’s thigh under the table throughout the whole conversation, moved to fond caresses and squeezes when the affection in his heart fills to bursting and he can’t actually lean over and kiss Vasquez in public, so he settles with this.

The girl sips her cider and asks pointed questions for almost an hour before she tires of their company, heading home with a new spring in her step. Faraday and Vasquez head in a different direction, though Faraday stares after her fondly, wondering if she really does have someone out there or if she’s just got an overactive imagination.

Either way, he knows that she’s walking away with more information than she’d been armed with before.

“You get the rest of them?” Vasquez asks, lifting his stack of posters as they head back to their horses. Faraday gestures to the bundle that’ll soon become their kindling for tonight’s fire. Faraday’s sure that Vasquez finds boundless pleasure in burning them, but Faraday’s not far behind, enjoying watching Vasquez’s warrant go up in smoke and the stress start to bleed out of his soulmate’s shoulders.

Faraday nods and gestures to where they’ve tied up the horses. “Come on, we got at least three more towns before New Mexico’s safe for you.” 

They’re saddling up to make their way into the next town to strip away all evidence that Vasquez has ever been a wanted man when Faraday feels the firm touch of Vasquez’s fingers on his wrist, tugging his attention away from Jack. “What is it?” he asks, curious if they missed a poster or something. It’s not like anyone’s rushing to bring Vasquez in, not after the story got circulated far and wide about Masterson’s villainy, but the sooner they stop seeing ‘Dead or Alive’ on paper, the better he’ll feel.

“Didn’t know you could be so good with children,” Vasquez admits, stepping closer to Faraday, letting Jack keep them private from intruding eyes. “Makes sense,” he continues, eyes sparkling with mischief. “You’re still a child yourself, no?”

“Real funny,” Faraday says, deadpan. “You upset that I’m never gonna bear you children?”

Vasquez makes a face like he’s bitten into a lemon whole, which Faraday takes to mean that he’s definitely not going to be straining to have them. “I only just got used to being responsible for something not me. Besides, then I would always have to be the one with rules and shouting, because you, you are a child.”

There’s no denying that, really, but Vasquez seems fairly assured in that answer and Faraday’s grateful for it. Call him greedy, but he’s not willing to share this man, not even with a third party they’re both responsible for.

It keeps their nights to themselves. Every time they make a new camp, it’s a new place for them to call home as they light their fires and fuck as the embers die out in the early morning, soothing each other’s pain by halving it and then kissing away wounds and scars, aches and strains after the fact. 

That night, when the fire is dying down and none of the wanted posters are left, Faraday shifts their bedrolls closer together to ward away the chill of the air, rubbing his hand back and forth over Vasquez’s chest to soothe him into sleep, the fading etching of Faraday’s initials still fading against his palm. 

“I am so glad,” Faraday murmurs, “that it was you.”

He thinks about this so often, but really, there isn’t any doubt in his heart that he and Vasquez would’ve wound up here. Vasquez cranes his neck backwards to give Faraday a sleepy, fond smile. 

“It was always going to be you, whether you were the bond or not. I chose before I knew,” Faraday says, sure of that now that he’s got a chance to look back on it. That Vasquez is his and they’ve saved each other from death thanks to the bond only helps, but even before he’d made the discovery, he’d _known_. “It was always going to be you.”

Vasquez gives a happy sound as he presses back into Faraday’s warmth. “Sometimes, only sometimes, you have Goodnight’s flair for poetry.”

“Guess he’s as good an influence on me as you are,” Faraday says, pretty pleased with his lot in life. Pressing a kiss to Vasquez’s temple, he resolutely tries to settle back in for the night. “Get some sleep. We got a lot of posters to find and I’ve been thinking about letting you drag me somewhere too hot for my blood when we’re through.”

He can’t see Vasquez’s face, but he can hear the smile when he says, “Mexico?”

“Only because you’re a damn nuisance and you’ll sulk if we don’t go eventually,” Faraday mock-complains as he closes his eyes and evens out his breathing. “You can start teaching me Spanish properly, seeing as we’ll be spending the rest of our lives together and I’ll need to know all those insults you’ve been slinging at me.”

“We start with the easy ones, then.”

“Will we?”

“Yes, of course. _Te amo_ , which means…”

Sneaky Mexican fucker thinks he’s so clever. “I love you,” Faraday replies, shaking his head. “Don’t need a Spanish lesson to know that one.”

“Just making sure you do,” Vasquez replies, but his next breath in is sharp, an off-guard inhalation as he lets his guard down. “ _Soy feliz de compartir cada instante de mi vida a tu lado._ ”

He's asleep by the time the last of the words trickle from his lips, but that’s okay. Faraday’s got tomorrow morning and the rest of their lives to figure out exactly what it is that Vasquez has just said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soy feliz de compartir cada instante de mi vida a tu lado - I am happy to share every moment of my life with you


End file.
